About the Author
Photo of Susan Senstad by Silvia Garcia Hurtado
Praise for Milk and Venom
Enthralling! Compulsive reading! Set in the glamorous, sensual, sexy Italy of the dolce vita and in febrile northern California, Susan S. Senstad’s Milk and Venom plunges us into the darkest corners of the female mind/psyche. Transgressing current gender politics, Senstad explores the destructive legacy of toxic motherhood. Two daughters, sisters, adopt brazen, volatile strategies in their desperate fight to save their sanity, claim their freedom, and create – out of the ruins – their lives and themselves. This is a wonderful book – a must read – highly dramatic, acutely self-aware, and often, in its ironies, quite funny.
— Gilbert Reid, writer, broadcaster and author
Son of Two Fathers, So This is Love and Lava
Once I started reading Milk and Venom, I couldn’t stop… It’s a rare book that comes right out and states that there are some mothers who don’t love their children and thus do not deserve to be loved in return. But this book also gives readers a reason to believe that children of such mothers can still succeed in life and love!
— Molly Prescott Porter, Communication Consultant
Praise for Music for the Third Ear
Book of the Week, and I’m almost certain this will be my Book of the Year because I cannot imagine a more profoundly moving, important novel coming along… Senstad takes a handful of characters and, using the themes of childlessness, statelessness and morality, fashions a story that contains all the pain and longing – and yes, the joy – of the human condition.
— Michele Magwood, Sunday Times
. . .Unusually perceptive . . . artful and compassionate, taking on difficult subjects without crassness or predictability. Senstad pits two wars and two generations against each other in a way that manages to be understanding and unjudgmental.
— Maggie O’Farrell, The Observer (London)