“The Erratics: A Memoir” by Vicki Laveau-Harvie: Published by Knopf, awarded in Australia, praised by Margaret Atwood, reviewed in The New York Times

top of front cover: "...a searing, brilliantly-written memoir about a destructive and cunning mother; reads like a novel..." —Margaret Atwood via Twitter

Is this memoir a satire on novels that feature characters who have an undiagnosed, nonspecific, literary madness, which is not understood by the author, publisher, reviewer, or reader? (Multiple personality?)

“Who is the ‘erratic’ of this desolate story of dysfunction, in which the author returns home to care for her aging parents? Is it Laveau-Harvie’s mother, an unpredictable creature of florid narcissism and dangerous persuasion? ‘She is a kind of flesh-and-blood pyramid scheme, a human Ponzi,’ Laveau-Harvie writes. ‘You buy in and you are hooked. You have an investment in believing the projections…this illusion of depth in thin air’…

“Her mother breathed lies. She would invent family members on a lark, and kill them off for sympathy from the neighbors. To get out of a teaching job she no longer wanted, she successfully faked her own death…

Is this memoir a parody of President Trump, an "unpredictable creature of florid narcissism," who "breathed lies"?

“They push for their mother to be given a diagnosis of dementia, even as the doctors protest that she is competent…

Does the mother have a normal personality that comes out for the doctors?

“In one scene, a conference is held to decide on the mother’s future. In any other book, it might be a pivotal moment — with the main players assembled, the mother primed for attack, her freedom in the balance — but we get a vague sense of events. The writer confesses that she has no memory of what was said…” (1).

Does the author have memory gaps?

1. Parul Sehgal. “ ‘The Erratics’ Remembers a Mother With a Monstrous Talent for Twisting Reality” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/books/review-erratics-vicki-laveau-harvie.html