Jul 14 2008
Mothers and Daughters Aplenty
Now I’m really glad I’m a dork, because I have a copy of Someone Not Really Her Mother, by Harriet Scott Chessman, to keep, and had a copy to leave in Berkeley with my friend, Dianne. It’s a brief, beautiful, and, for me, immediately engaging little book about family. Hannah is elderly and forgetful of things current, but memories mix and swirl like smoke in her head, causing joy, confusion, and much melancholy in her already complicated days. Her daughter and granddaughters also float around her, unsure of how to watch her slip away, but unable to keep hold. The writing is poetic and simple. I was even able to make use of my high school French, which always makes me feel a little pleased with myself, given that I can’t remember stuff from last week.
Also recently, Digging to America, by Anne Tyler, a very different book about family and mother-daughter relationships. This is the story of two families, two couples and their various familial appendages, who meet at the airport where both are awaiting the arrival of baby girls being adopted from Korea. Their lifestyles, backgrounds, and parenting philosophies are very different, but they become friends, celebrating at annual “arrival parties” each year the day the girls first entered their lives. Very charming.
Waaaay off in another mother-daughter direction (there are patterns here, trends, that I find unexpected and certainly unplanned…hmmm) is Shiver, by Lisa Jackson. Pocket thriller. Mom fell from the balcony of her room in a creepy old mental institution on her birthday–also her daughter’s birthday–and now 20 years later people with vague relationships to the place are dying in weird staged circumstances, and daughter’s ex- is one of the first to go. I bought this at a used book store and, apparently there are books that proceed and follow it that link the characters, which I will be looking for. If you take this book to the beach, bring lots of sunscreen, pack a lunch…maybe a flashlight!
