Attachment Disorders explores the inevitably disordered attachments of motherhood, daughterhood, marriage and friendship, and the indignities of aging in a youth-obsessed world.
After years of struggling with a persistent writer’s block, novelist and free-lance writer, Hattie Brown, has begun a new project. Then, on Christmas Eve, her quirky, demented 85-year-old mother, Florence, disappears without a trace, and her recalcitrant actress daughter, Daphne, makes a shocking announcement, obliging Hattie to put aside her writerly ambitions and focus on untangling her relationships. As much as she longs for publication, her work in progress also threatens to upend her marriage by revealing a passionate affair she has kept from her husband, Charlie, for twenty-five years.
When Hattie’s mother finally resurfaces in the arms of another woman’s husband, and when Daphne lands an off-Broadway role, Hattie is forced to consider her attachments to her mother, her daughter, and her husband in a new light, and to re-order her priorities as a writer and a woman of a certain age. Just as she is on the verge of giving up on her dreams, events take an unexpected turn, setting Hattie on a path toward a future she never dared to imagine.
With humor and insight Attachment Disorders celebrates the complexities and, yes, absurdities of family relationships, particularly those of mothers and daughters as they careen between enduring love and the inescapable frustrations of filial and maternal affection. At the heart of this story are the deep connections that unite us even when we are most alienated—the unquenchable spirit of the elderly, the resilience of the young, and the buoyancy of a menopausal woman’s determination that the best is yet to come.
