The Butterfly Lampshade

A Novel

By: Aimee Bender

Narrated by: Julia Whelan

The first novel in ten years from the author of the beloved New York Times bestseller The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake, a luminous, poignant tale of a mother, a daughter, mental illness, and the fluctuating barrier between the mind and the world

On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.
Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents -- her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact -- she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her own place in the world.
As Francie conjures her past and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality. The scenes set in Francie's past glow with the intensity of childhood perception, how physical objects can take on an otherworldly power. The question for Francie is, What do these events signify? And does this power survive childhood?
Told in the lush, lilting prose that led the San Francisco Chronicle to say Aimee Bender is "a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language," The Butterfly Lampshade is a heartfelt and heartbreaking examination of the sometimes overwhelming power of the material world, and a broken love between mother and child.

Critic reviews

"Aimee Bender’s Latest Is a Proustian Reverie. A surrealist memory box of a novel. . . Its particular quality of stillness hums with so much mystery and intensity that the book never feels static. It is a measure of the book’s success that as I reached the conclusion, I felt considerably more altered by the experience than I often am by novels that travel much further from their beginnings. . . The novel [is] a kind of small-scale, supernatural Proustian reverie: Proust if what Proust had been trying to recover was not luminous, ordinary reality, but a rupture in luminous ordinary reality.. . . One finishes the novel with the eerie sense that we too are objects who have slipped accidentally into being and that, like the butterfly, the beetle and the dried rose, we really ought not to be here.”
–Kevin Brockmeier, The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)

“[a] dazzling rumination on time and mental illness. . . Bender has a gift for rooting wonderfully inventive fables in a very recognizable, walkable world [and the] middle-class Los Angeles of backyards and hatchbacks, bus stops and craft shops, is overlaid with mythic events—modest miracles, observed by few, that expose a world of mystery. . . [Francie’s] receptiveness to the marvels eddying around brightens every detail in a small, deeply felt life.
–Anne Stringfield, Oprah Magazine

[A] poignant novel of love and mental illness.
–Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today

"A poignant, emotional story sprinkled with magic"
– Woman's World

“[An] astounding meditation on time, space, mental illness, and family. . . Rich in language and the magic of human consciousness, Bender's masterpiece is one to savor.”
–Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

"Woven through with unexpected images and unexplained phenomena, Bender’s novel is a moving meditation on choosing a positive future while acknowledging the circumstances of one’s past.”
–BookReporter

Awesome to listen to!

A sensitive novel, and was enthralled with the story and the sensitivity used to describe how it feels to live with someone who struggles with mental illness. 10 out of 10 would recommend! Also the narrator has a wonderful reading voice!

This wasn’t a good read choice during a period of social isolation

Fear is real to those who are held captive y it in their minds. This story illustrates the imprisonment of the mind of a daughter whose mother fights her struggle with mental illness. Is she really like her mother? Caution ! The back and forth of this story is madding .

Pushing and Pulling Time Mixed with Memories

The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender did not go far enough for me. The beauty of the writing was not enough to save this novel. This is the rare instance when a brilliant author writes a work with amazing potential but in the end leaves the reader unsatisfied. The ideas are great and the mood is perfect to tell a story blending magical elements with ordinary settings and extraordinary situations. In the end, there just wasn’t enough there to make a complete novel with a coherent story. I was struck and surprised by other reviewers elevating this novel to the level of Proust. The impact that mental illness has on the entire family is an important subject for talented writers like Aimee Bender to explore. For me, simply delving into the subject was not enough. I would recommend this book to only the most devoted fans of the author. The narration performance by Julia Whelan was okay but did not add anything to this material. In fact, the performance was so detached that it brought me further away from understanding the characters.

Vivid imagery

So excellent. Great story and phenomenal reader! Am I about to immediately listen to it all over again? Maybe! 🤗

Quite a Journey!

Wow! This story truly took you on an intense ride! You are able to look inside the mind of someone who has been the victim of a family member with mental health issues. She is clearly struggling with several ways and you never know up until the very end if she also suffers from mental illness. eye opening and enlightening. And Julia is an incredible narrator- delivers the story beautifully!