Helpful Score: 6
This book starts out "I didn't like my mother. and I certainly didn't love her. I know she didn't like me either. I can't say whether she loved me, as I don't remember her ever telling me so." This is the first hand telling of a mother/daughter relationship that is painful to read. Misunderstandings and missed opportunities abound. As both a daughter and a mother of girls, this is telling of a story I don't want to live even through a book. It is a story of pain and hurt on all sides. For all that, it is a very compelling story that was very well written. I did not realize that it was Alyse Myers first book until after I had read the entire book and was looking at the back cover. It did leave me feeling very melancholy.
Helpful Score: 5
a grim story, dreary at times, though there is closure. Basically:
Overachiever from good family and underachiever from not-so-good fall in love as teens and marry early (author's mother and father); three quick daughters later (author is oldest), they're fighting all the time, and essentially separated. Author was father's favorite, which mother (and sisters) resents when he dies young, with mother transferring her hostile feelings from him to author-as-teen. Years of separation, followed by a (more-or-less) reconciliation with dying mother. Her teen years, even before the father died, kind of reminded me of a Dave Pelzer's story in that the younger sisters didn't mind the way the mother treated the author at all.
Be prepared to go through chapter after chapter of vicarious psychological and emotional abuse.
Overachiever from good family and underachiever from not-so-good fall in love as teens and marry early (author's mother and father); three quick daughters later (author is oldest), they're fighting all the time, and essentially separated. Author was father's favorite, which mother (and sisters) resents when he dies young, with mother transferring her hostile feelings from him to author-as-teen. Years of separation, followed by a (more-or-less) reconciliation with dying mother. Her teen years, even before the father died, kind of reminded me of a Dave Pelzer's story in that the younger sisters didn't mind the way the mother treated the author at all.
Be prepared to go through chapter after chapter of vicarious psychological and emotional abuse.
I appreciated the courage and honesty of Ms. Myers' memoir. For me it was a compelling, fascinating read -- this daughter's attempt to remember, explain and understand the difficult and complicated relationship with her mother. Several times I cried because I felt Myers captured feelings that are too nebulous to describe or too taboo to talk about. In particular her explanation of the unique relationship she experienced with her mother compared to her uncomprehending and unsympathetic siblings. First daughters (and first sons) so often find themselves in this uncomfortable and painful predicament. Myers managed to put all of this down on paper and captivate in the process.
Very good read.
