Indeed it is a tribute to Ms. Gordon's mother. I picked up this book every spare moment I had and so wanted to write the author to tell her how much I enjoyed her writing. I will definitely read Shadow Man, the book she wrote about her father. ( )

Indeed it is a tribute to Ms. Gordon's mother. I picked up this book every spare moment I had and so wanted to write the author to tell her how much I enjoyed her writing. I will definitely read Shadow Man, the book she wrote about her father. ( )

I found this to be a fascinating memoir, I liked the structure, found it relevant for how to think in retrospect about the complex, life-long saga that is the relationship of a mother and daughter. ( )

This book made me think a lot about my own mother and grandmother, outside and beyond their relationship to me. I don't often consider them as women on their own, certainly not as much as perhaps I ought to. It's helpful, especially as I examine my relationship with my own mum, to keep in mind that she had a life before me, and that my grandmother had a life before her. It adds a dimension I'm glad to be reminded of.

I also really like the idea of a long line of female ancestors. That idea doesn't really get developed in the book, probably for lack of genealogical information, but the thought is tangentially articulated. All in all, it's one of the better mother-daughter relationship memoirs I've read. ( )

I have to say, I find books about mother-daughter relationships weirdly fascinating. I like the title metaphor of this one: I can remember being a little girl who would wander away from my mother and find myself, moments later, drawn back into her orbit, a moon that could only stray so far and no further. Gordon's relationship with her mother is a trying one; her mother was a "working mother" when no mothers worked outside the home, and her father's premature death placed the mother and daughter into painful financial and emotional situations. The memoir is a series of flashback, but it opens with a current scene: Mary is planning a birthday party for her mother in the nursing home where she is an Alzheimer's patient. The distance between the two women could not be more blatant, and yet...you still feel that bizarre, ineluctable, almost gravitational pull between them.

So kudos to Gordon for tapping into that. This memoir really resonated with me, even though my own relationship with my mother is utterly different from Gordon's; and I think that is because Gordon locked on to some universal truths about mothers and daughters. It's sad, though. I felt a bit weepy when I was done - not so much because of their tender love (nope, not that) but because of the sort of tragic mix of love and pain, pull-together and pull-apart. ( )