by Alice Eve Cohen
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Just released: March 31, 2015
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Genre: Memoir
Hardback: 288 pages
Rating: 4.5
"For the first time in decades I’m remembering Mom, all of her--the wonderful and terrible things about her that I’ve cast out of my thoughts for so long. I’m still struggling to prevent these memories from erupting from their subterranean depths. Trying to hold back the flood. I can’t, not today. The levees break."
Thirty years after her death, Alice Eve Cohen’s mother appears to her, seemingly in the flesh, and continues to do so during the hardest year Alice has had to face: the year her youngest daughter needs a harrowing surgery, her eldest daughter decides to reunite with her birth mother, and Alice herself receives a daunting diagnosis. As it turns out, it’s entirely possible for the people we’ve lost to come back to us when we need them the most.
Although letting her mother back into her life is not an easy thing, Alice approaches it with humor, intelligence, and honesty. What she learns is that she must revisit her childhood and allow herself to be a daughter once more in order to take care of her own girls. Understanding and forgiving her mother’s parenting transgressions leads her to accept her own and to realize that she doesn’t have to be perfect to be a good mother.
First sentence:
One day, my brilliant, beautiful, complicated mother appeared at my kitchen table, thirty-one years after her death.
My two-bits:
A story on relationships between mothers and daughters with more of a mother focus.
I liked how this story was presented. The author tells her tale with a past and present self. Upon reflection of the past, life lessons and advice for the present come forth.
There are touching and poignant moments that got me thinking of the true meaning of motherhood in relation to me and mine.
About the author:
She has written for Nickelodeon, CTW, and CBS, and has toured her solo shows nationally and internationally. Alice has received fellowships and grants from the NYS Council on the Arts and the NEA. She graduated from Princeton University and got her MFA from The New School. Alice teaches at The New School and lives with her family in New York City. She is currently working on a novel.
* added this to my Bookish Bingo challenge - square: Memoir
* review copy courtesy of Summer Reading Challenge 2015. It's not too late! You can join the challenge here. @booksparks #SRC2015
Destination: Find the miraculous in Manhattan
