An uneven narrative about the author’s personal struggles, but it is sensitively rendered.
A debut memoir explores childhood challenges and their hard-won resolutions.
McCloe guides readers through her painful 1950s childhood and the in-depth psychotherapy that eventually allowed her to be at peace with its consequences. Growing up in Philadelphia as the middle of five sisters in a conservative Italian family, the author faced demons large and small, from her mother’s staid secrecy to a bout of rheumatic fever that left her hospitalized for a year. McCloe intersperses vivid stories of that childhood with scenes of her adult self on her therapist’s couch, processing the persistence of her early troubles across later decades. In the book’s second half, the author moves from examining her childhood in detail and instead zooms out to give readers an overview of the years that followed, from the youthful heartbreak of an ill-fated marriage to the complexities of finding love again in her later years. While the childhood dramas she describes are tame in comparison to the experiences of prominent memoirists like Jeannette Walls and Alexandra Fuller, McCloe nonetheless excels at conjuring a child’s perspective of the strains of an unstable family life. Overhearing her mother discussing her hospitalization for rheumatic fever, the author writes: “I waited and wondered if I was now just half a sister to my sisters.” That keen sense of fear tinged with magical thinking pervades the book’s first half, and the author’s ability to bring the reader deep into the emotions of her childhood is its greatest strength. The narrative flags after the midpoint, losing its tight focus on the author’s early life and instead becoming a descriptive catalog of McCloe’s later experiences. The author’s therapy sessions also take on greater prominence in the book’s latter half, and while the insights she gains there are often compelling, the descriptions of the sessions themselves feel like unnecessary repetitions of tired tropes: “How did you feel when your mother kept secrets?” Dr. A asked one day. Still, McCloe’s examination of her struggles with interpersonal relationships is sincere and thoughtful, and her hopeful interpretation of those challenges will likely inspire readers who have undergone similar trials.
An uneven narrative about the author’s personal struggles, but it is sensitively rendered.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-63268-136-2
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Solid, practical advice for women on how to properly nurture their sons.
How women can raise boys to become good men.
More than ever, women are under pressure to be "everything to everyone," writes Meeker (The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity, 2010, etc.), as "working women feel that they must perform equally well both in the office and in caring for their home, husband, and children." The dynamics of raising boys is especially difficult for women due to the gender difference and the fact that women tend to be nurturing and helpful while allowing their sons to evolve into men in a constantly shifting masculine paradigm. Through research and interviews from her own practice, Meeker gives women the necessary tools to understand that perfection is not a realistic goal but that doing the best one can will ensure good results. Equally useful to single mothers and women with husbands is the advice that sons need to know they are loved from a very young age, as this builds a foundation of confidence in a child, a base that allows a boy to gradually move away from his mother as he interacts with male peers and elders. A boy's home life must be solid: a safe haven to return to regardless of his age, a place where his thoughts and feelings are respected and where he can express his hopes and dreams without fear of judgment. Meeker recommends introducing boys to religion, prayer and the unconditional love that comes from having a strong faith to boost self-confidence. She also skillfully navigates the world of sex—from a boy's first body awareness to the powerful effects of pornography and sexual messages embedded in social media, video games and news media, to his interactions in the world of girls and women. A mother's imprint on her son is powerful right from birth and remains so throughout her son's life. Meeker's advice gives women the tools to navigate these often rocky waters with confidence.
Solid, practical advice for women on how to properly nurture their sons.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-51809-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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