Review: Author’s mom gave her ‘Silent Treatment’ for months at a time

Laurie Hertzel, The Minnesota Star Tribune

Plenty of memoirs have been written about fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, but few are as disturbing and fascinating as Jeannie Vanasco’s third memoir.

“A Silent Treatment” is about the ghosting the author’s mother inflicts on her frequently, for long periods of time and for reasons that are nearly unfathomable.

Later in life, the widowed Barbara moves across the country to live with Vanasco in a basement apartment that Vanasco and her husband have remodeled for her.

Once settled, Barbara takes to frequently and mysteriously ghosting her daughter — abruptly ceasing all communication, sometimes for days, often for months. “Over the five years since she moved in with Chris and me [it amounts] to a year and a half, at least,”