I was a big fan of "The Lovely Bones" and the first thing I love about
this book is that it is utterly unlike her that novel in every way. I
read it in two days, unable to put it down. Personal experience with my
own demented, flawed and raging mother probably makes me partial. She
had me on the first page:
"When all is said and done, killing my
mother came easily. Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the
core of the person affected by it. My mother's core was rotten like the
brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers. She had
been beautiful when my father met her and still capable of love when I
became their late-in-life child, but by the time she gazed up at me that
day, none of this mattered."
Helen goes on to make one bad
decision after another, none of them easy to read. I winced a lot while
reading this. I had a hard time with Helen having sex with her best
friend's 30 year old son who had grown up with her own daughter. Eww. I
understand the bad reviews and the inability for some to finish this
book. It is not for the faint of heart, or the young who perhaps have
not had the experience of an aging parent.
She tells us the
story of her childhood, family secrets, failed marriage and career as a
nude model in flashbacks that butt up against the details of the 24 hour
period after she smothers her mother with a towel quite unplanned.
Through this we see how her mother's mental illness and the devotion of
her father to her mother along with his own problems affected Helen.
How family is family, and how that affects the choices we make and how
we, in turn, affect our own spouses and children.
