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Her Last Death
Her Last Death
Author: Susanna Sonnenberg
Susanna's mother gave her a copy of Penthouse when she was a ten-year-old, cocaine when she was 12, and seduced her boyfriend at 14. Sonnenberg recounts "the true calamity of being daughter to this mother." The glory of this memoir is that the author survived her traumatic childhood and somehow navigated her way to a deftly written...  more »
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ISBN-13: 9780743291095
ISBN-10: 0743291093
Publication Date: 1/6/2009
Pages: 288
Rating:
  • Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
 97

3.3 stars, based on 97 ratings
Publisher: Scribner
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

Rebemdee avatar reviewed Her Last Death on
Helpful Score: 9
I get it, her mother was a druggie, inappropriate, and unstable. Does that explain the author's decision to live recklessly? It was hard to have sympathy for her, as everything comes back to her mother, and Susanna seems to take little responsibility for her own choices. The book reads as a litany of one-night stands and poor choices, with very little growth or self exploration.
demiducky25 avatar reviewed Her Last Death on + 161 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 7
This book was like a train wreck- pretty awful but you couldn't look away. It's not often that I can say that I don't enjoy reading something, but I wasn't a fan of this book. I only finished it because I started it and hoped that it would get better. Essentially the premise is Sonnenberg describing how her mother messed her up by being a sex addict, druggie, and liar. The beginning of this book was very disjointed, I don't know if it's because Sonnenberg is recalling her earliest childhood memories and those are often disjointed themselves, but it made it difficult to connect with what was going on. Things become less "jumpy" and seem to be in a more coherent order as Sonnenberg goes into later childhood and teenage memories, but it seems to me to be more of a "here's a list of increasingly crazy things I or my mother did" type thing. Sonnenberg seems to be going for "shock value." I could almost see this train of thought- "What will shock readers more, telling them about how my mother gave me my first crack, my mother's list of famous sex partners (no names though), my first threesome, etc...I know, I'll thrown in all of it." It just seems too "out there" for everything to be true. I understand that the point of her tale is to explain why she feels love & connection for a mother who seriously messed her up and how as an adult she feels she can't go to her mother's deathbed because she knows she needs to cut her mother out of her life in order to lead a normal existence, but she really doesn't touch on that except superficially. I'm also curious about why DYFS or some other protective service was never brought in. It seemed to be out in the open that her mother was messed up & all the adults in Sonnenberg's life were aware of this fact. All in all, this book wasn't what I expected it to be.
reviewed Her Last Death on + 53 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5
Very disturbing memoir of conflict between a mother-daughter relationship....love vs. insanity. The author minces no words. If you like reading about dysfunctional families, you will enjoy this.
kristieao avatar reviewed Her Last Death on + 33 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
I really thought this was a great book. I thought her writing style flowed very easily. A great memoir about a crazy mother and the affects she had on her two girls and others in her life. If you enjoy memoirs I think you will enjoy reading this book!
isitfriday avatar reviewed Her Last Death on + 170 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
I was not a huge fan of this book, perhaps i did not feel that the mother was the monster her daughter wanted the reader to think she was. i just did not sympathize with any of the people and felt the need to complete the book only because i had started to read it.
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jazzysmom avatar reviewed Her Last Death on + 907 more book reviews
Trying to make myself finish, i read almost half of this book, then asked myself "why am i doing this?". It was boring and i found i was forcing myself to read. Personally i just could not get into it. I had to stop as i know there is a more interesting book out there to spend my time with.
gph102 avatar reviewed Her Last Death on + 5 more book reviews
I felt the same way about wanting more details regarding the mother/daughtrt relationship and a little less about the author's love/sex life. It was an Ok read
Grateful-Mommy avatar reviewed Her Last Death on
This book was just "Ok". I felt like I wanted more details at times and then was bored in the last few chapters. I would not recommend this book.


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Tagsmemoir