READING JANE

Kennedy reads through her mother’s decades of diaries, reliving her childhood from her mother’s perspective.

The author’s mother, Jane, died by suicide, leaving her affairs and possessions to be sorted out by her daughter. A few years later, Kennedy began to read through her mother’s diaries, which spanned decades, in an effort to understand Jane’s choice. In the process of reading, she pieced together forgotten elements from her childhood to find some closure to their relationship. Through the diary entries included throughout the text, Kennedy details the strained relationship she had with her constantly critical mother. One of the primary motivations for her criticism seemed to come from Jane’s perception of the author’s similarities to her father, Alan, a physically abusive alcoholic she divorced when Kennedy was 6 years old. As the author moves through the diaries, Jane is revealed to have been a relatively indifferent mother whose criticisms formed a number of Kennedy’s insecurities. While recounting her life through the lens of the diary entries, the author also ponders interesting metacognitive questions about writing and memory (“it’s like those times we drive and then realize we are twenty miles farther along and don’t remember getting there. What is really going on with me?”); the structure of the memoir is loosely chronological, containing parallel narratives, with one timeline progressing from the moment Kennedy found out about her mother’s death and the other following her mother’s diaries as they relate to her childhood. Occasionally, the time jumps can be confusing, but for the most part they strengthen the narrative—the structure gives Kennedy an effective method for making comparison between herself and her mother. The memoir’s conclusion demonstrates a significant degree of empowerment gained from the harrowing project.

A heart-wrenching dissection of a toxic mother-daughter relationship.