Mother dearest is a story of childhood suffering which poses the questions: is the young narrator a girl or a boy? Is his brother human? Is his father a busy scientist or an idiot hermit? Is his mother a simple (and happy) narcissistic pervert? Très Chère Mère / Mother Dearest is illustrated throughout and the text is in both English and French. The book comes with a 13 minute CD also titled Mother Dearest.
"Guilliaume Belhomme, label boss at Lenka Lente in France, has been producing these quite hip little booklets accompanied by a mini CD for several years now. Big fish Nurse With Wound contributed a few times and now we have a brand new release by NWW-member Andrew Liles. In the past, we complained in Vital Weekly about the booklets being in French, which may look arty but also seriously limited the market. This one, as the bilingual title suggest, is in both French and English. Hooray! So now we can read the tragic story of Violet, and her even more tragic relationship to her mother. And sausage day. I won’t spoil the fun too much, but let me assure you this is a intriguing story about childhood suffering in a surreal family setting offering the listener/reader another side to Andrew Liles, that of the storyteller. And he pulls it off with considerable gusto. The booklet is accompanied by a 13 minute mini CD, which I really enjoyed. This is a far more restrained and classical-tinted soundtrack rather than the slightly more chaotic recent ‘monster’ releases, which were based on brief samples from the immense Liles-library. On Mother Dearest Liles focuses on sound, which is sparse, classical and actually, like Violet, lovely and very pretty. Liles paints a safe room for Violet, where no one speaks, and where the walls are cushioned pink. In all, Mother Dearest, is a wonderful and very rewarding release, both musically as in its written words. (Vital Weekly)