Page 26 Raine • Strained Differentiation combat disguise, which references her mother, who committed suicide when she “climbed up into the ash tree with a rope” (50, 229). When prompted to adopt a new title and identity for disguise, she chooses one that allows her to identify with her mother, which displays the strained intensity of her differential struggles; where Ash’s mother abandoned her daughter, Ash clings tightly to her mother. Similarly, despite having access to militarygrade weapons, Ash asks her husband to bring her mother’s gun when she decides to shoot the men on her farm (230). Even further, after killing all of the men, Ash goes to retrieve the deed to her farm which was hidden in the ash tree in “the notch just above where [her mother] had tied her rope” (238). In each of these instances, Hunt displays Ash’s dilemma of differentiation by having her cling to nodes of her mother while also juggling her avoidance of grief. Though initially Ash allowed herself to feel the pain of loss at home, and thus acknowledged her separateness from her mother, eventually “those smells and sights and sounds” which reminded her of her mother “chewed and worked at [her] like worms in their corridors” until Ash “packed up [her] bag and went to war” to flee her grief (139). Yet even while fleeing, Ash maintains points of connectivity; in selecting a name that reflects her mother’s suicide, wanting her mother’s weapon to kill her enemies, and hiding the farm deed exactly where her mother died, Ash preserves a juncture with her mother that highlights her inability to cleave. As such, Hunt illustrates the psychological burden of differentiation for the maternally identifying daughter by emphasizing these strained efforts to maintain maternal connectivity, which preserves relational unity at the expense of filial independence. Conclusion Through his detailing of mother-daughter relationships, maternal identification, repressed grief, and the psychological burden of differentiation, Laird Hunt explores the adverse effects of entwined mother-daughter psyches in his novel Neverhome. The text exposes how such relational dependency complicates maternal loss for these reliant daughters, and it highlights their struggle to separate after lifetimes of psychological unity with the mother. Hunt’s attentiveness to the undifferentiated daughter, who wrestles with questions of identity and independence, holds relevance even today for the millions of young girls acquainted with the loss of a mother through death, divorce, adoption, and/or foster care. Though likely less severe than Hunt’s extreme and fictionalized example, these girls often experience a similar struggle in their maternal disjunction, having been detached from the biological mother-and-daughter bond. As such, Hunt’s narrative may act as a tool, providing insights on these unique relational struggles and allowing audiences to better understand the challenges these girls face as they develop a sense of self apart from their first and most defining relationship.
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