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Should be subtitled: How adults in desperate need of therapy mess up their kids, and not just in an, "Oh, that's not healthy" way but in an, "Oh, that neighbor kid is seriously messed up and the ick factor is making me not want to read this anymore" way.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Gornick's reflections on her childhood and adolescence in New York make for an incredibly compelling read. Memories and recollections from the past form the main narrative thread of this memoir, while snapshots of the present (and very recent years), which consist of Gornick and her mother walking together across the city, are woven throughout.
The reader is introduced to influential figures and scenes from Gornick's life - the women who lived as neighbours in their tenement house in the Bronx (in particular, Nettie), the men she falls in and out of love with, and of course her indomitable mother, herself a grieving widow. These characters are brought to life vividly with all their flaws and struggles, bringing the reader very closely into the world Gornick has grown up in.
The mother-daughter relationship is a key theme, yet one which is not overlaboured or tediously described - instead Gornick gently explores the people, stories, and places which bind the two women together as they both move through life - and the backdrop of their walks across the city provide a certain momentum to these.
Gornick's prose is distinctive and beautiful to read; it is eloquent, witty, and powerful all at once.
The reader is introduced to influential figures and scenes from Gornick's life - the women who lived as neighbours in their tenement house in the Bronx (in particular, Nettie), the men she falls in and out of love with, and of course her indomitable mother, herself a grieving widow. These characters are brought to life vividly with all their flaws and struggles, bringing the reader very closely into the world Gornick has grown up in.
The mother-daughter relationship is a key theme, yet one which is not overlaboured or tediously described - instead Gornick gently explores the people, stories, and places which bind the two women together as they both move through life - and the backdrop of their walks across the city provide a certain momentum to these.
Gornick's prose is distinctive and beautiful to read; it is eloquent, witty, and powerful all at once.
On her relationship with her mother, p. 78
My skin crawled with her. She was everywhere, all over me, inside and out. Her influence clung, membrane-like, to my nostrils, my eyelids, my open mouth. I drew her into me with every breath I took. I drowsed in her etherising atmosphere, could not escape the rich and claustrophobic character of her presence, her being, her suffocating suffering femaleness.
Reflecting on a romantic relationship, p. 120
The world is a framed space filled in by obsession. I move through the space grim and staring-eyed, a modern woman condemned to the knowledge that the experience of love will be played out repeatedly on an ever-diminishing scale, but always with a full complement of fever and sickness, intensity and denial.
Later reflections on her shifting relationship with her mother, p. 196
But it has no staying power, this undreamed-of equanimity. It drifts, it gets lost, flashes up with unreliable vibrancy, then refuses to appear when most needed, or puts in an appearance with its strength much reduced. The state of affairs between us is volatile. Flux is now our daily truth.
The instability is an astonishment, shot through with mystery and promise.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual assault, Abortion, Death of parent
emotional
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual harassment