Omega Farm: A Memoir
Description
*A New Yorker and Vogue Best Book of 2023*
“Compelling... [McPhee] positions herself neither as victim nor saint but as someone who, she says, only wants to be good.” —The Washington Post
A moving memoir from an award-winning novelist—a riveting account of her complicated, bohemian childhood and her return home to care for her ailing mother.
In March 2020, Martha McPhee, her husband, and their two children set out for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she finds herself grappling simultaneously with a mother slipping into severe dementia and a house that’s fallen into neglect. As Martha works to manage her mother’s care and the sprawling, ramshackle property—a broken septic system, invasive bamboo, dying ash trees—she is swept back, unwillingly, into memories of her fraught, dysfunctional childhood.
In this masterful exploration of a complicated family legacy, McPhee “makes no effort to spare her own flaws even as she searches for the roots of her mature turmoil in the shortcomings of adults who failed in the fundamental task of protecting her younger self” (BookPage). Omega Farm is an “expansive” (New Yorker) testament to hope in the face of suffering, and a courageous tale about how returning home can offer a new way to understand the past.
Praise for Omega Farm: A Memoir
A Vogue and New Yorker Best Book of 2023
“Compelling… McPhee’s prose is steady, her tone thoughtful. She examines events of the past from all angles. She is amazingly generous… [Her] carefulness adds to her credibility; she positions herself neither as victim nor saint but as someone who, she says, only wants to be good.”
—Washington Post
"Expansive ... As she revisits the scene of her tumultuous childhood ... [she examines] the stories that sit behind her own ideas of family and sense of self."
—New Yorker
"Spirited and ruthlessly honest ... There’s a darkness to these recollections, and McPhee’s willingness to reckon with them and with the needs of the shambolic property form the memoir’s hypnotic narrative. McPhee’s adventures in forestry are as involving as her unearthing of family secrets."
—Vogue
"She spares neither herself nor family members from criticism in this prickly, wide-ranging account of the many ways in which the past seeps into and poisons the present."
—BookList
“Omega Farm is a moving memoir and an inspiring testament to forgiveness and hope.”
—Shelf Awareness
"McPhee is a captivating writer, gracefully weaving together the disparate strands of familial reckoning, the eerie pandemic years, and her evolving understanding of forest ecology... A potent exploration of the complicated project of revisiting a childhood and maintaining a family legacy."
—Kirkus, starred review
"Piercing...a courageous self-examination made of equal parts candor and compassion."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“McPhee is an efficient, graceful writer, who makes no effort to spare her own flaws even as she searches for the roots of her mature turmoil in the shortcomings of adults who failed in the fundamental task of protecting her younger self.”
—BookPage
“Sharply observed, beautifully written, and blazingly honest, Omega Farm is the memoir I didn’t know to hope for – one that endeavors to make sense of that alien period around the pandemic when families reconfigured to shelter together. In this intimate family portrait, Martha McPhee returns to her childhood home where she's forced to confront a dark past while contending with a demanding present: a failing mother, an unhappy son, and a house and orchard in utter disarray. The book is a marvel, deftly telling the story of how we find out who we are, and what calls us to transcend.”
— Adrienne Brodeur, author of Little Monsters and Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me
"In this unputdownable pandemic memoir about midlife spin-out, Martha McPhee recounts, with candor and grace, the raw, vital work of clearing the wreckage a chaotic childhood has left behind."
— Ada Calhoun, New York Times-bestselling author of Also a Poet and Why We Can't Sleep
“A hypnotic and moving tale about a daughter’s determination to restore the run-down family farm and forest of her idyllic, utopian childhood, only to be haunted by family secrets and memories she cannot undo. With grit and determination, Martha McPhee explores the hurts that define us, and the love that sustains.”
—Jill Bialosky, author of History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life and The Deceptions
“Martha's McPhee's Omega Farm, set against the backdrop of a global pandemic and the small family forest where she took shelter, manages to capture the trauma of childhood while also finding love, and healing. I will carry this story of her chaotic, vibrant beginning for a long time.”
—Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes and The Half Moon
“A beautiful, brutal tale of one woman’s reckoning with her childhood and awakening to the world around her. Immersive and unforgettable.”
—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age
