Lynne Tillman Breaks the Rules

What spurred Lynne Tillman to write Mothercare, her first work of memoir, is in many ways a mystery. In a long and prolific career of writing fiction, criticism, and essays, she has avoided personal writing and does not seem to feel liberated by it now. “I have strong reservations about doing it,” she writes, “and now I am doing it.” The book is Tillman’s account of her mother’s decline from normal pressure hydrocephalus, a form of dementia caused by excess cerebrospinal fluid accumulating in the brain.