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MOTHERCARE: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence
Brilliantly original novelist and cultural critic Lynne Tillman became one of nearly 53 million Americans who care for a sick family member when her mother developed an unusual and little understood condition called Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. Instantly, Tillman's independent and spirited mother went from someone she knew to someone else, a woman entirely dependent on her children--an eleven-year process through which her mother underwent many surgeries and some misdiagnoses, while the family navigated consultations and confrontations with doctors, adjusting to the complexity of her cognitive issues, including memory loss. With her notoriously exquisite writing style and reputation as a "rich noticer of strange things" (Colm To�b�n), Tillman describes, without flinching, the unexpected, heartbreaking, and frustrating years of caring for a sick parent. Mothercare is both a cautionary tale and sympathetic guidance for anyone who suddenly becomes a caregiver, responsible for the life of another--a parent, loved or not, or a friend. This story may be helpful, informative, consoling, or upsetting, but it never fails to underscore how impossible it is to get the job done completely right.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published August 2, 2022
About the author
Lynne Tillman
114 books320 followersHere’s an Author’s Bio. It could be written differently. I’ve written many for myself and read lots of other people’s. None is right or sufficient, each slants one way or the other. So, a kind of fiction – selection of events and facts.. So let me just say: I wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old. That I actually do write stories and novels and essays, and that they get published, still astonishes me.
My news is that my 6th novel MEN AND APPARITIONS will appear in march 2018 from Soft Skull Press. It's my first novel in 12 years.
Each spring, I teach writing at University at Albany, in the English Dept., and in the fall, at The New School, in the Writing Dept.
I’ve lived with David Hofstra, a bass player, for many years. It makes a lot of sense to me that I live with a bass player, since time and rhythm are extremely important to my writing. He’s also a wonderful man.
As time goes by, my thoughts about writing change, how to write THIS, or why I do. There are no stable answers to a process that changes, and a life that does too. Writing, when I’m inhabiting its world, makes me happy, or less unhappy. I also feel engaged in and caught up in politics here, and in worlds farther away.
When I work inside the world in which I do make choices, I'm completely absorbed in what happens, in what can emerge. Writing is a beautiful, difficult relationship with what you know and don’t know, have or haven’t experienced, with grammar and syntax, with words, primarily, with ideas, and with everything else that’s been written.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
July 24, 2022
Disclaimer that this book is about my own family, so naturally I find it very interesting. That said, since it's about my own family, that might make me a tougher audience - I also experienced many of the events described in the book and have my own stories about Tillman's mother (my grandmother). She captures so much here, without sentimentality, but beautifully and with great complexity.
December 15, 2022
“Life doesn’t proceed in an orderly way. It frustrates people who need to control every part of their lives, who go berserk when anything changes on them. Life doesn’t allow it, total control, and things will go south, and north, every which unexpected way.”
“I thought I knew my limits, I thought I should have limits, but limits and boundaries are erased and erected and erased again. There is nothing stable when dealing with a parent or friend whose condition is essentially unstable.”
Lynne Tillman initially presents her mother, Sophie—whose final years are the subject of this book—as she imagines her when young: talented and ambitious, a girl who dreamt of painting and writing. Marriage had apparently changed everything for her. This attractive, smart, and resourceful woman had tried to contort herself into the ideal 1950s American wife and mother: she stayed home and raised three daughters in the suburbs. It made her very angry. When her husband retired, the couple moved to Florida. After his death in 1984, her eldest daughter found her an ideal Manhattan apartment. Nearly 79 years old, Sophie was finally back in the lively city of her birth, the place where she belonged.
She spent seven-and-a-half years strolling the streets she loved and enjoying all that New York had to offer. But that’s not what this book is about. Its focus is the eleven years that Tillman and her two older sisters cared for Sophie when she became ill. “Keeping her alive was done generously,” writes the author, “but not selflessly.” Since childhood, Lynne had disliked her mother, so being involved in her care for such a long period was “a gruelling obligation.” Life felt “narrower”, “disturbed by emergencies, eruptions, and thudding repetitions.” Time was being “stolen” by her parent. A paragon of rationality, practicality, and organizational ability Sophie may have been, but she was also blunt, rude, arrogant, competitive, narcissistic, and envious of her daughters—the youngest in particular. It is the tension between ego and superego—the author’s actual feelings towards her parent and the sense of obligation to her—that makes this memoir so compelling.
Tillman makes it clear that she’s not speaking for her sisters here; the reflections in the book are hers alone. Late in the memoir, she explains why her reactions to the circumstances were unlike those of Sophie’s older daughters:
Each of us sisters had a different mother and father. It’s remarkable and true that siblings experience their parents differently, and each can say, “That wasn’t how he was with me,” or “She liked you better,” and “We had different parents,” the main source of disorder among them. It is confounding to comprehend just how different parental differences can be. Winnicott’s good-enough mother might be good enough for one, not the other.
The author also notes that the terminal illness of a mother or father places unique strains on adult children. Differences in siblings’ sense of duty and their understanding of how a parent’s care should be handled can permanently break and divide families. Although not explicitly discussed, their awareness of the potential for estrangement, as well as “a decided practicality,” informed the Tillman sisters’ interactions with each other and “encouraged getting along.”
Sophie’s health problems were first apparent to Tillman in 1994 when she returned to New York after four months abroad. Her mother’s behaviour had become strange: she was unkempt and distant, she stared vacantly in front of her, and she seemed depressed. Dementia, you might think—everyone does, including doctors, when an elderly person presents as cognitively impaired. However, when you hear hoofbeats, it’s not always horses; sometimes there really can be zebras.
Sophie had normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH), a little-known and often missed condition, mainly affecting the elderly. Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) accumulates in the ventricles (fluid-filled chambers) of the brain, which then press on tissues and structures. While the cause of NPH can’t always be determined, it’s often due to a head injury, hemorrhage, infection, inflammation, or a tumour, which impedes CSF flow. When the condition was first named, the pressure of the fluid was thought to be normal, but it can, in fact, run quite high. Memory loss, urinary frequency/poor bladder control, and problems walking are the main signs.
The Tillmans were both lucky and unlucky. A good internist made this “subtle” diagnosis based on symptoms and an MRI, but the arrogant neurologist to whom he referred the family for confirmation of the diagnosis did not agree with it. The specialist believed the patient’s adult daughters were simply refusing to face the truth: Sophie had Alzheimer’s. He ridiculed them, dismissing their point that her cognitive decline had been precipitous, not an insidious process, as is the case with Alzheimer’s disease. The differing opinions of two other physicians further muddied the waters.
Ultimately, the condition was treated as NPH. A neurosurgeon operated, placing a shunt in Sophie’s brain. This would allow CSF to drain through tubing from the brain’s ventricles, down the neck, and into the abdomen. Unfortunately, the surgery failed. Within days of being released from hospital, Sophie began to have seizures. The tubing was too long and had twisted, and the CSF was unable to drain. A “revision” surgery was performed to adjust the tube’s length, but the patient still didn’t progress: she was immobile, even semi-comatose. For the neurologist, this confirmed his view that the patient did not have hydrocephalus at all. A new neurologist provided assistance and a fresh perspective on care of the elderly. Sophie underwent further revision to address a tube-clogging issue (a common problem), and though the surgical delay had caused permanent brain damage, she did begin to recover some of her faculties. Over the years, a total of six revisions would be performed. According to Tillman, when the shunt was functional, Sophie was lucid. Towards the end, however, its malfunction caused significant seizure activity.
During the last decade of her life. Sophie was also on a whole host of ever-changing medications. Over a dozen were administered at breakfast alone. The impression the author gives is that her mother, though wheelchair-bound, was active and engaged with life. She took lessons to relearn how to knit and paint, she enjoyed being taken to the park and the theatre by her caregiver, and she derived pleasure from the birthday parties her daughters threw for her.
I admit that I was skeptical about an elderly person (in her 80s, then 90s) going through multiple surgeries and setbacks. Was the payoff worth the cost for this mother and her daughters? It’s hard to say. The second neurologist was free of the ageist bias of the first. An optimist with high expectations, he told Sophie’s daughters that if this were his mother, he would choose as they did. Tillman stresses how fit, vigorous, and generally together her mother had been prior to the onset of the NPH symptoms and how determined and resilient she was after.
Much of the book concerns the challenges around finding reliable, competent, full-time caregivers for Sophie. She had not wanted to be placed in a home, and the sisters did their utmost to respect her wishes. However, there were financial constraints and ethical dilemmas, not the least of which was hiring women of colour at minimum wage to do the demanding work. Some of the carers were incompetent, thieving, or downright loopy, and had to be let go. Frances, the caregiver who stayed the longest, treating Sophie like her own mother, stole from the family and regularly rang up huge phone bills. Tillman turned a blind eye to it all. If this was the price that had to be paid for care—and to save Tillman from spending more time in the apartment than she had to—then so be it.
A short, absorbing memoir, Mothercare acknowledges some hard truths. Children do not always love their parents. Even when they do, caring for them is demanding and life-altering. “I learned what I never wanted to know,” writes Tillman, who was clearly transformed by the experience. The fifteen years between Sophie’s death in 2007 and the writing of this book appear to have provided time for reflection and understanding. This is a thoughtful, honest, and mature work that comes not from the wound but the scar. Tillman concludes with some thoughts on mortality, but it’s her remarks about the aged among us that most struck me:
In New York City, these people are not hidden from sight, they are in plain sight, if you notice them. The healthy and capable elderly take buses, go shopping, go to movies, take walks, slowly, go to restaurants alone or with friends, they live among and with us. They live. That’s the point.
The turning away interests me, the ignoring, ways to ignore inevitability. Now that I have seen the inevitable, against my will, which I didn’t want to see or know, I can rarely pretend it won’t happen to me, and pay more attention. Let’s say, I have become aware.
“I thought I knew my limits, I thought I should have limits, but limits and boundaries are erased and erected and erased again. There is nothing stable when dealing with a parent or friend whose condition is essentially unstable.”
Lynne Tillman initially presents her mother, Sophie—whose final years are the subject of this book—as she imagines her when young: talented and ambitious, a girl who dreamt of painting and writing. Marriage had apparently changed everything for her. This attractive, smart, and resourceful woman had tried to contort herself into the ideal 1950s American wife and mother: she stayed home and raised three daughters in the suburbs. It made her very angry. When her husband retired, the couple moved to Florida. After his death in 1984, her eldest daughter found her an ideal Manhattan apartment. Nearly 79 years old, Sophie was finally back in the lively city of her birth, the place where she belonged.
She spent seven-and-a-half years strolling the streets she loved and enjoying all that New York had to offer. But that’s not what this book is about. Its focus is the eleven years that Tillman and her two older sisters cared for Sophie when she became ill. “Keeping her alive was done generously,” writes the author, “but not selflessly.” Since childhood, Lynne had disliked her mother, so being involved in her care for such a long period was “a gruelling obligation.” Life felt “narrower”, “disturbed by emergencies, eruptions, and thudding repetitions.” Time was being “stolen” by her parent. A paragon of rationality, practicality, and organizational ability Sophie may have been, but she was also blunt, rude, arrogant, competitive, narcissistic, and envious of her daughters—the youngest in particular. It is the tension between ego and superego—the author’s actual feelings towards her parent and the sense of obligation to her—that makes this memoir so compelling.
Tillman makes it clear that she’s not speaking for her sisters here; the reflections in the book are hers alone. Late in the memoir, she explains why her reactions to the circumstances were unlike those of Sophie’s older daughters:
Each of us sisters had a different mother and father. It’s remarkable and true that siblings experience their parents differently, and each can say, “That wasn’t how he was with me,” or “She liked you better,” and “We had different parents,” the main source of disorder among them. It is confounding to comprehend just how different parental differences can be. Winnicott’s good-enough mother might be good enough for one, not the other.
The author also notes that the terminal illness of a mother or father places unique strains on adult children. Differences in siblings’ sense of duty and their understanding of how a parent’s care should be handled can permanently break and divide families. Although not explicitly discussed, their awareness of the potential for estrangement, as well as “a decided practicality,” informed the Tillman sisters’ interactions with each other and “encouraged getting along.”
Sophie’s health problems were first apparent to Tillman in 1994 when she returned to New York after four months abroad. Her mother’s behaviour had become strange: she was unkempt and distant, she stared vacantly in front of her, and she seemed depressed. Dementia, you might think—everyone does, including doctors, when an elderly person presents as cognitively impaired. However, when you hear hoofbeats, it’s not always horses; sometimes there really can be zebras.
Sophie had normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH), a little-known and often missed condition, mainly affecting the elderly. Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) accumulates in the ventricles (fluid-filled chambers) of the brain, which then press on tissues and structures. While the cause of NPH can’t always be determined, it’s often due to a head injury, hemorrhage, infection, inflammation, or a tumour, which impedes CSF flow. When the condition was first named, the pressure of the fluid was thought to be normal, but it can, in fact, run quite high. Memory loss, urinary frequency/poor bladder control, and problems walking are the main signs.
The Tillmans were both lucky and unlucky. A good internist made this “subtle” diagnosis based on symptoms and an MRI, but the arrogant neurologist to whom he referred the family for confirmation of the diagnosis did not agree with it. The specialist believed the patient’s adult daughters were simply refusing to face the truth: Sophie had Alzheimer’s. He ridiculed them, dismissing their point that her cognitive decline had been precipitous, not an insidious process, as is the case with Alzheimer’s disease. The differing opinions of two other physicians further muddied the waters.
Ultimately, the condition was treated as NPH. A neurosurgeon operated, placing a shunt in Sophie’s brain. This would allow CSF to drain through tubing from the brain’s ventricles, down the neck, and into the abdomen. Unfortunately, the surgery failed. Within days of being released from hospital, Sophie began to have seizures. The tubing was too long and had twisted, and the CSF was unable to drain. A “revision” surgery was performed to adjust the tube’s length, but the patient still didn’t progress: she was immobile, even semi-comatose. For the neurologist, this confirmed his view that the patient did not have hydrocephalus at all. A new neurologist provided assistance and a fresh perspective on care of the elderly. Sophie underwent further revision to address a tube-clogging issue (a common problem), and though the surgical delay had caused permanent brain damage, she did begin to recover some of her faculties. Over the years, a total of six revisions would be performed. According to Tillman, when the shunt was functional, Sophie was lucid. Towards the end, however, its malfunction caused significant seizure activity.
During the last decade of her life. Sophie was also on a whole host of ever-changing medications. Over a dozen were administered at breakfast alone. The impression the author gives is that her mother, though wheelchair-bound, was active and engaged with life. She took lessons to relearn how to knit and paint, she enjoyed being taken to the park and the theatre by her caregiver, and she derived pleasure from the birthday parties her daughters threw for her.
I admit that I was skeptical about an elderly person (in her 80s, then 90s) going through multiple surgeries and setbacks. Was the payoff worth the cost for this mother and her daughters? It’s hard to say. The second neurologist was free of the ageist bias of the first. An optimist with high expectations, he told Sophie’s daughters that if this were his mother, he would choose as they did. Tillman stresses how fit, vigorous, and generally together her mother had been prior to the onset of the NPH symptoms and how determined and resilient she was after.
Much of the book concerns the challenges around finding reliable, competent, full-time caregivers for Sophie. She had not wanted to be placed in a home, and the sisters did their utmost to respect her wishes. However, there were financial constraints and ethical dilemmas, not the least of which was hiring women of colour at minimum wage to do the demanding work. Some of the carers were incompetent, thieving, or downright loopy, and had to be let go. Frances, the caregiver who stayed the longest, treating Sophie like her own mother, stole from the family and regularly rang up huge phone bills. Tillman turned a blind eye to it all. If this was the price that had to be paid for care—and to save Tillman from spending more time in the apartment than she had to—then so be it.
A short, absorbing memoir, Mothercare acknowledges some hard truths. Children do not always love their parents. Even when they do, caring for them is demanding and life-altering. “I learned what I never wanted to know,” writes Tillman, who was clearly transformed by the experience. The fifteen years between Sophie’s death in 2007 and the writing of this book appear to have provided time for reflection and understanding. This is a thoughtful, honest, and mature work that comes not from the wound but the scar. Tillman concludes with some thoughts on mortality, but it’s her remarks about the aged among us that most struck me:
In New York City, these people are not hidden from sight, they are in plain sight, if you notice them. The healthy and capable elderly take buses, go shopping, go to movies, take walks, slowly, go to restaurants alone or with friends, they live among and with us. They live. That’s the point.
The turning away interests me, the ignoring, ways to ignore inevitability. Now that I have seen the inevitable, against my will, which I didn’t want to see or know, I can rarely pretend it won’t happen to me, and pay more attention. Let’s say, I have become aware.
July 24, 2022
With a mother experiencing Stage 4 cancer and a comparison to Joan Didion in the description, I knew I wanted to read this book.
Colm Toiban comments on her ability to notice things, and I will agree with that--the elements Tillman weaves in as she observes her mother's slow descent are striking, and I appreciated them.
But there were two nagging elements that repelled me from this book:
Her writing style is not one that aligns with what appeals to me. I recognize that she is a member of a literary trend and that she does well with that trend: very stripped down observations, purposeful comma splices, a very detached voice. But I yearned for details I knew she wouldn't--and perhaps, because of her style, couldn't--provide. We were given no real sensory details, no figurative language. This isn't wrong, by any means, but it is not a style of writing I seek out,
The other element is, perhaps, what will appeal to other readers. She is contradictory, but not in a way that felt incredibly aware. She writes of this Mother character, whom she admits to having stopped liking when she was six and was relieved to see finally die, but she also calls herself a good daughter for caring for her. She admits her other New York sister did more work, but she also speaks of how much she sacrificed, how much her mother took from her. I am by no means judging anyone who stops liking her mother at a young age or feels a freedom after she passes--we all experience family differently, and eleven years is an awfully long time to fight for someone through paperwork and caregivers and hospital visits and the litany of medications her mother had to take was stunning--this isn't my qualm. I think, instead, it's a kind of self-righteous tone that made me think that this woman would have been a similarly narcissistic figure in her own children's lives if she had children.
More contradictions are rooted in the ways in which she looks at the caretakers who drift in and out of her mother's life and the one who remains for a decade. She is unkind in her depictions of all of them. We get reminders of the fraught lives they lead: lack of documentation, minimum wage, families left behind so they can send money home. We also get a list of the generosities her family provides: a computer from her sister, paying for one caregiver's daughter's wedding. But these women are also called nuts and several passages include descriptions of how they stole, but she looked the other way because of how desperate she was for their care. They are terrible and yet they did the thing the author was unwilling to do, which was care for an elderly woman with many serious ailments. For minimum wage.
And: her mother's knitting instructor seemed to adore her, but she did not check in with the sisters after the funeral, so she was dishonest.
These contradictions, as they built up, felt frustrating rather than relieving.
I received an advance ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Colm Toiban comments on her ability to notice things, and I will agree with that--the elements Tillman weaves in as she observes her mother's slow descent are striking, and I appreciated them.
But there were two nagging elements that repelled me from this book:
Her writing style is not one that aligns with what appeals to me. I recognize that she is a member of a literary trend and that she does well with that trend: very stripped down observations, purposeful comma splices, a very detached voice. But I yearned for details I knew she wouldn't--and perhaps, because of her style, couldn't--provide. We were given no real sensory details, no figurative language. This isn't wrong, by any means, but it is not a style of writing I seek out,
The other element is, perhaps, what will appeal to other readers. She is contradictory, but not in a way that felt incredibly aware. She writes of this Mother character, whom she admits to having stopped liking when she was six and was relieved to see finally die, but she also calls herself a good daughter for caring for her. She admits her other New York sister did more work, but she also speaks of how much she sacrificed, how much her mother took from her. I am by no means judging anyone who stops liking her mother at a young age or feels a freedom after she passes--we all experience family differently, and eleven years is an awfully long time to fight for someone through paperwork and caregivers and hospital visits and the litany of medications her mother had to take was stunning--this isn't my qualm. I think, instead, it's a kind of self-righteous tone that made me think that this woman would have been a similarly narcissistic figure in her own children's lives if she had children.
More contradictions are rooted in the ways in which she looks at the caretakers who drift in and out of her mother's life and the one who remains for a decade. She is unkind in her depictions of all of them. We get reminders of the fraught lives they lead: lack of documentation, minimum wage, families left behind so they can send money home. We also get a list of the generosities her family provides: a computer from her sister, paying for one caregiver's daughter's wedding. But these women are also called nuts and several passages include descriptions of how they stole, but she looked the other way because of how desperate she was for their care. They are terrible and yet they did the thing the author was unwilling to do, which was care for an elderly woman with many serious ailments. For minimum wage.
And: her mother's knitting instructor seemed to adore her, but she did not check in with the sisters after the funeral, so she was dishonest.
These contradictions, as they built up, felt frustrating rather than relieving.
I received an advance ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
April 7, 2023
In 1994 Lynne Tillman’s mother, Sophie Merrill, became ill. For the next eleven years she was dependent on her three daughters and various carers.
Lynne recalls how her mother’s behaviour changed; something that was also noticed by her sisters. Then, came the trouble of getting a proper diagnosis as doctors’ opinions varied.
Finally, Lynne’s mother was diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus, meaning she had too much fluid on her brain which wasn’t escaping. As a result, Sophie underwent few operations to insert (and then to fix) a ‘shunt’ to drain the build-up fluid.
In this memoir, Lynne describes how her mother became selfish and mean, and how caring for her mother put her under huge emotional strain.
Tillman is honest and blunt – at one point she does admit that she hasn’t liked her mother for a long time, and she didn’t particularly like when the usual carer was off and it was her turn to stay with her.
In this stark account, Tillman describes that it’s not easy to look after your elders. There is a lot of mixed emotions: Tillman thinks that looking after her mother is the right thing to do, but at the same time, she isn’t enjoying it at all.
I did get from the book that she had a much better relationship with her late father, rather than her mother. When she was describing her father, I could sense the warmth, but when writing about her mother, some parts were quite dry and lacked the emotional feeling.
It’s such a hard book to review, as it’s someone’s personal memoir, their story. They’ve lived it, they knew their parents, not me. It certainly made me think of my own relationship with my parents, especially my mother.
Lynne recalls how her mother’s behaviour changed; something that was also noticed by her sisters. Then, came the trouble of getting a proper diagnosis as doctors’ opinions varied.
Finally, Lynne’s mother was diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus, meaning she had too much fluid on her brain which wasn’t escaping. As a result, Sophie underwent few operations to insert (and then to fix) a ‘shunt’ to drain the build-up fluid.
In this memoir, Lynne describes how her mother became selfish and mean, and how caring for her mother put her under huge emotional strain.
Tillman is honest and blunt – at one point she does admit that she hasn’t liked her mother for a long time, and she didn’t particularly like when the usual carer was off and it was her turn to stay with her.
In this stark account, Tillman describes that it’s not easy to look after your elders. There is a lot of mixed emotions: Tillman thinks that looking after her mother is the right thing to do, but at the same time, she isn’t enjoying it at all.
I did get from the book that she had a much better relationship with her late father, rather than her mother. When she was describing her father, I could sense the warmth, but when writing about her mother, some parts were quite dry and lacked the emotional feeling.
It’s such a hard book to review, as it’s someone’s personal memoir, their story. They’ve lived it, they knew their parents, not me. It certainly made me think of my own relationship with my parents, especially my mother.
August 7, 2022
In a world where people "pass" or "transition" instead of dying, where we must tell others (and ourselves) that we love our families, it's a shock - albeit one we need - to read MotherCare by Lynne Tillman. She pulls no punches.
Tillman's mother died about 11 years after her first signs of dementia. Part of the book recounts how Tillman and her two sisters struggled with the medical system to finally arrive at a correct diagnosis of the problem: it was not Alzheimer's as first suggested. You learn from this just how important it is to have advocates when confronting the medical system. In this case, treatment for the actual condition helped Tillman's mother recover partially and enjoy a better quality of life for several years.
You don't expect a book about the last years of one's mother's life to be so clear-eyed and unsentimental. Rather than what an author is supposed to think, Tillman reveals the often painful and even embarrassing reality of what she does think. That must have taken real effort to write, effort for which we should be grateful.
Tillman's example will help her readers when they face that moment in their own lives.
Tillman's mother died about 11 years after her first signs of dementia. Part of the book recounts how Tillman and her two sisters struggled with the medical system to finally arrive at a correct diagnosis of the problem: it was not Alzheimer's as first suggested. You learn from this just how important it is to have advocates when confronting the medical system. In this case, treatment for the actual condition helped Tillman's mother recover partially and enjoy a better quality of life for several years.
You don't expect a book about the last years of one's mother's life to be so clear-eyed and unsentimental. Rather than what an author is supposed to think, Tillman reveals the often painful and even embarrassing reality of what she does think. That must have taken real effort to write, effort for which we should be grateful.
Tillman's example will help her readers when they face that moment in their own lives.
September 15, 2022
The prose in this is beautiful, but to me it felt like it was setting up all these amazing ideas worthy of exploring and then it never explored them, it just carried on in a stream of conscious wave. There was no deeper examination, of the system, of family dynamics, of Lynne's personal relationship, only throw away lines and a strange amount of commentary on the weight of her mother's caretakers.
August 2, 2022
Happy pub day to my last non fiction read MOTHERCARE: On Obligation, Love, Death and Ambivalence by Lynne Tillman! I enjoyed this book! It’s an in depth account of the author caring for her mother and dealing with the American healthcare system. I appreciated the honesty in this book as some parts were uncomfortable to read but caring for a sick parent will always have some uncomfortable moments. It was interesting to read about Tillman’s experiences with her sisters, finding the right doctor and diagnosis for her mother and hiring the right caregiver. This book made me reflect on my own family and mortality. I also listened to the audiobook and Kim Niemi did a great job narrating! Another good book to add to my beloved Soft Skull collection!
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Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy and HighBridge Audio via NetGalley for my ALC!
.
Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my gifted review copy and HighBridge Audio via NetGalley for my ALC!
June 6, 2022
This book is aptly titled. The author explores her feelings about her mother's prolonged decline and subsequent death in her 98th year alongside dispassionate descriptions of her mother's illness and the search for appropriate treatments. While the book is about death and dying, it is not a tearjerker unless you are emotionally moved by the seemingly loveless relationship between mother and daughter. As narcissistic, demanding, and cold as "Mother" was, her daughter shared caregiver responsibilities with her sisters from the onset of her mother's illness until her death. Lynne Tillman's memoir does not spare her mother, nor herself, in recounting her experiences as a caregiver.
June 19, 2022
This is a beautifully written account of taking care of one's mother in old age and infirmity. I'd easily recommend it to anyone who has older parents. It's realistic, useful, and brutally honest. It also has an even tone to it and reads very smoothly. As someone who went through this same journey, also in New York City, all of it rang true to me.
April 29, 2023
Ehhh I’m a little on the fence about this book. On the one hand, the subject matter is fascinating and the way Tillman writes with such brutal honesty about caring for a passing loved one is admirable.
On the other hand, this book in places just feels a little mean spirited. Most people she only has the worst to say about, which I understand but it kind of feels like a what’s the common denominator situation here if everyone around you is a dick…
I also didn’t vibe with the writing style, there was no sentimentality, little emotion, the whole thing felt like I was behind a glass screen. Maybe it would work for someone else but I’m much more emotion driven so this book felt a little lacking
On the other hand, this book in places just feels a little mean spirited. Most people she only has the worst to say about, which I understand but it kind of feels like a what’s the common denominator situation here if everyone around you is a dick…
I also didn’t vibe with the writing style, there was no sentimentality, little emotion, the whole thing felt like I was behind a glass screen. Maybe it would work for someone else but I’m much more emotion driven so this book felt a little lacking
July 14, 2024
Never have I regretted purchasing a book, until I purchased this one.
This book is full of the entitled opinions the author has about her mother, the physicians that treated her mother and her mother’s care givers.
Zero substance.
It reads as if you’re listening to this privileged woman yammer away at a cocktail party about her dying mother’s massage therapist, dance teacher that visited her mother’s apartment, in home care giver etcetera : who can afford these services?
If you’re looking for something to guide you, inform you, offer some insight into the passing of your mother and the relationship, this book is not it.
This book is full of the entitled opinions the author has about her mother, the physicians that treated her mother and her mother’s care givers.
Zero substance.
It reads as if you’re listening to this privileged woman yammer away at a cocktail party about her dying mother’s massage therapist, dance teacher that visited her mother’s apartment, in home care giver etcetera : who can afford these services?
If you’re looking for something to guide you, inform you, offer some insight into the passing of your mother and the relationship, this book is not it.
January 3, 2023
Medically inaccurate, with a narcissistic, arrogant and entitled narrator. I’ve read many books on death and dying, and worked with geriatric patients across the spectrum from healthy to terminally ill, and no family memoir I have ever read has been less accurate or more misleading than this one. Skip it.
August 6, 2022
If you're now or have ever been a care giver, you're likely to see a bit of yourself in this book. It may not be a part of yourself you're proud of, but then Tillman does not sugarcoat the experience. And her honesty feels like a gift after the platitudes one becomes accustomed to hearing.
May 27, 2023
The many other reviews here have done a very good job of summarizing the text and the honesty that Tillman brought forth. What I want to do is capture some quotes and comments for my own use. This review format is an experiment. Usually I would add only the quotes to the quotes list.
Legend: #/ = page number C/ = comment
13/ … passivity hinders. Caregivers might have to get into the doctor's faces, querying their decisions, prescriptions, even annoying them. Doctors are not gods, thgouhg some ac that way. Some hate being questioned. Some have no time to listen. Some are fine. Many do a good job. … Do what you must to get what you need.
C/ This will be one of several quotes relating to the family side of medicine, the most neglected and therefore the most in need of bolstering.
19/ Life doesn't proceed in an orderly way. It frustrates people who need to control every port of their lives, who go berserk when anything changes on them. Life doesn't allow it, total control, and things will go south, and north, every which unexpected way.
50/ Interminable, enervating waiting—hospitals suck life from you.
51/ I will say, without caution, when a parent becomes dependent, a family is inundated with surprising, bewildering, and constant, complicated issues. Never before-faced issues. It will be shocked by the magnitude and mystery and consequences of this new and old fact of live. … Often families are eviscerated by their differences. Often one child cares for the parent, and all burdens rest on them. But when several adults are in charge, a hell of resentments and conflicts can overwhelm functioning.
67/ Helpers are critically important in getting the best out of doctors, aides, hospitals. It's critical to be bold—your charges can't defend or help themselves. Critical to do your own research, to encourage doctors to explore and try other and different techniques, tactics, ideas. The elderly especially are seen as dead weight to the medical industry.
112/ Through a circuitous route, the Carolina sister discovered there was a hospie unit four floors above Mother's room. The nurses and doctors hadn't mentioned it one of the first hospice units in the country.
C/ This was my family's experience as well. We kept a 24 hour presence for our Mother. Of course it would have been great to have a room to get away for a private phone call or to do some research while mom napped. There was a Family Room right down the hall, that a nurse mentioned in passing. If she hadn't randomly commented about it, we would have never known.
113/ Nothing happens in hospitals over the weekend.
C/ We felt that, too. This is dangerous because illness and injury don't keep factory time.
115/ The responsibility of having Mother die at home was of an emotional an psychological magnitude beyond my imagining.
119/ Watching Mother die, near her, I couldn't move, speak, ask anything. I was in suspension. What occurred before my eyes, a woman dying, was also not occurring. I observed it, her being undone in slow motion. Dying is inevitable, but estranged from anything you know, watching it feels crazy. Death is always unexpected, even when expected, and this all-too-human event remains inevitable, and incomprehensible. You don't believe you're seeing what you're seeing, and you aren't also able to see it. Then it happens.
151/ I ould have to wait until I die to know death, and then it would be too late to comfort myself. Another of life's paradoxes.
154/ Parents' deaths—they're different [than a friend's or uncle's death], usually. These characters leave the world, and, improbably, absurdly, their children feel shorn of symbolic protection, and, in a sense feel naked and vulnerable.
C/ Tillman references the April 23, 2007 article, "The Way We Age Now" by Atul Gawande and calls it revelatory. Here's a link: http://archive.today/wiW5T
Here's the last paragraph: “Mainstream doctors are turned off by geriatrics, and that’s because they do not have the faculties to cope with the Old Crock,” Felix Silverstone, the geriatrician, explained to me. “The Old Crock is deaf. The Old Crock has poor vision. The Old Crock’s memory might be somewhat impaired. With the Old Crock, you have to slow down, because he asks you to repeat what you are saying or asking. And the Old Crock doesn’t just have a chief complaint—the Old Crock has fifteen chief complaints. How in the world are you going to cope with all of them? You’re overwhelmed. Besides, he’s had a number of these things for fifty years or so. You’re not going to cure something he’s had for fifty years. He has high blood pressure. He has diabetes. He has arthritis. There’s nothing glamorous about taking care of any of those things.”
159/ "Life wants to live." Kiki Smith, artist.
Legend: #/ = page number C/ = comment
13/ … passivity hinders. Caregivers might have to get into the doctor's faces, querying their decisions, prescriptions, even annoying them. Doctors are not gods, thgouhg some ac that way. Some hate being questioned. Some have no time to listen. Some are fine. Many do a good job. … Do what you must to get what you need.
C/ This will be one of several quotes relating to the family side of medicine, the most neglected and therefore the most in need of bolstering.
19/ Life doesn't proceed in an orderly way. It frustrates people who need to control every port of their lives, who go berserk when anything changes on them. Life doesn't allow it, total control, and things will go south, and north, every which unexpected way.
50/ Interminable, enervating waiting—hospitals suck life from you.
51/ I will say, without caution, when a parent becomes dependent, a family is inundated with surprising, bewildering, and constant, complicated issues. Never before-faced issues. It will be shocked by the magnitude and mystery and consequences of this new and old fact of live. … Often families are eviscerated by their differences. Often one child cares for the parent, and all burdens rest on them. But when several adults are in charge, a hell of resentments and conflicts can overwhelm functioning.
67/ Helpers are critically important in getting the best out of doctors, aides, hospitals. It's critical to be bold—your charges can't defend or help themselves. Critical to do your own research, to encourage doctors to explore and try other and different techniques, tactics, ideas. The elderly especially are seen as dead weight to the medical industry.
112/ Through a circuitous route, the Carolina sister discovered there was a hospie unit four floors above Mother's room. The nurses and doctors hadn't mentioned it one of the first hospice units in the country.
C/ This was my family's experience as well. We kept a 24 hour presence for our Mother. Of course it would have been great to have a room to get away for a private phone call or to do some research while mom napped. There was a Family Room right down the hall, that a nurse mentioned in passing. If she hadn't randomly commented about it, we would have never known.
113/ Nothing happens in hospitals over the weekend.
C/ We felt that, too. This is dangerous because illness and injury don't keep factory time.
115/ The responsibility of having Mother die at home was of an emotional an psychological magnitude beyond my imagining.
119/ Watching Mother die, near her, I couldn't move, speak, ask anything. I was in suspension. What occurred before my eyes, a woman dying, was also not occurring. I observed it, her being undone in slow motion. Dying is inevitable, but estranged from anything you know, watching it feels crazy. Death is always unexpected, even when expected, and this all-too-human event remains inevitable, and incomprehensible. You don't believe you're seeing what you're seeing, and you aren't also able to see it. Then it happens.
151/ I ould have to wait until I die to know death, and then it would be too late to comfort myself. Another of life's paradoxes.
154/ Parents' deaths—they're different [than a friend's or uncle's death], usually. These characters leave the world, and, improbably, absurdly, their children feel shorn of symbolic protection, and, in a sense feel naked and vulnerable.
C/ Tillman references the April 23, 2007 article, "The Way We Age Now" by Atul Gawande and calls it revelatory. Here's a link: http://archive.today/wiW5T
Here's the last paragraph: “Mainstream doctors are turned off by geriatrics, and that’s because they do not have the faculties to cope with the Old Crock,” Felix Silverstone, the geriatrician, explained to me. “The Old Crock is deaf. The Old Crock has poor vision. The Old Crock’s memory might be somewhat impaired. With the Old Crock, you have to slow down, because he asks you to repeat what you are saying or asking. And the Old Crock doesn’t just have a chief complaint—the Old Crock has fifteen chief complaints. How in the world are you going to cope with all of them? You’re overwhelmed. Besides, he’s had a number of these things for fifty years or so. You’re not going to cure something he’s had for fifty years. He has high blood pressure. He has diabetes. He has arthritis. There’s nothing glamorous about taking care of any of those things.”
159/ "Life wants to live." Kiki Smith, artist.
September 10, 2022
Smart, plain-spoken, thoughtful. A bit of how-to and advocacy mixed in with the memoir, but it's mostly the story of her mother's long decline while Tillman and her two sisters took care of her. It hit close to home because my mother had some similar symptoms, though a different diagnosis and a luckily not so long nor harrowing death. I really appreciated Tillman's candor about the strains caregiving puts on families, her frankness about the politics of hiring help, and her clear-eyed honesty about her relationship with her difficult mother.
I copied out long passages from this one; here are a few:
There’s no easy time for any family or group of close friends around sickness. When a parent is terminally ill, the weight has a particularity, a special gravity. You will lose a parent, you have just two, usually, though families today might have several. Still, that parent figure in your life is unique. And a family is a complex, its own kind of complex formed of many elements. It presents with preexisting psychological conditions.
*************
Hiring a woman of color not born in the United States seemed a way to lessen complicity, a kind of elision, a veering away from the legacy of slavery. But it was only an angle. My privilege lived through the after-effects of colonialism and imperialism. The terms and effects were not abstract, they were personal, embodied in the women we were able to hire to care for Mother. I was conscious of it, but didn’t forsake my privilege. I could have done that by living with Mother, changing my life for her. Even though I knew it was a way to resist that history, I couldn’t, I couldn’t live with her, just couldn’t. I would have thrown myself out of one of the many windows in her apartment high up on the twenty-fourth floor. Guilt was irrelevant, and self-serving.
*****************
I will say, without caution, when a parent becomes dependent, a family is inundated with surprising, bewildering, and constant, complicated issues. Never-before-faced issues. It will be shocked by the magnitude and mystery and consequence of this new and old fact of life. Unforeseeable and nasty accidents and diagnoses present themselves, and families may do research or react impulsively, they may deliberate or become numb with trepidation. Often families are eviscerated by their differences. Often only one child cares for the parent, and all burdens rest on them. But when several adults are in charge, a hell of resentments and conflicts can overwhelm functioning.
*****************
About three months before she died, Mother was sitting at the table, and asked me, “Why didn’t you girls put me in a home?” I told her she was adamant about not ever wanting to be in one. Now she said, “That was stupid. You girls have spoiled me.”
**************
The responsibility of having Mother die at home was of an emotional and psychological magnitude beyond my imagining.
I copied out long passages from this one; here are a few:
There’s no easy time for any family or group of close friends around sickness. When a parent is terminally ill, the weight has a particularity, a special gravity. You will lose a parent, you have just two, usually, though families today might have several. Still, that parent figure in your life is unique. And a family is a complex, its own kind of complex formed of many elements. It presents with preexisting psychological conditions.
*************
Hiring a woman of color not born in the United States seemed a way to lessen complicity, a kind of elision, a veering away from the legacy of slavery. But it was only an angle. My privilege lived through the after-effects of colonialism and imperialism. The terms and effects were not abstract, they were personal, embodied in the women we were able to hire to care for Mother. I was conscious of it, but didn’t forsake my privilege. I could have done that by living with Mother, changing my life for her. Even though I knew it was a way to resist that history, I couldn’t, I couldn’t live with her, just couldn’t. I would have thrown myself out of one of the many windows in her apartment high up on the twenty-fourth floor. Guilt was irrelevant, and self-serving.
*****************
I will say, without caution, when a parent becomes dependent, a family is inundated with surprising, bewildering, and constant, complicated issues. Never-before-faced issues. It will be shocked by the magnitude and mystery and consequence of this new and old fact of life. Unforeseeable and nasty accidents and diagnoses present themselves, and families may do research or react impulsively, they may deliberate or become numb with trepidation. Often families are eviscerated by their differences. Often only one child cares for the parent, and all burdens rest on them. But when several adults are in charge, a hell of resentments and conflicts can overwhelm functioning.
*****************
About three months before she died, Mother was sitting at the table, and asked me, “Why didn’t you girls put me in a home?” I told her she was adamant about not ever wanting to be in one. Now she said, “That was stupid. You girls have spoiled me.”
**************
The responsibility of having Mother die at home was of an emotional and psychological magnitude beyond my imagining.
June 29, 2023
I was looking forward to this book, as a neglected area of thought and attention. I wanted to hear about the myriad struggles caring presents, no matter what stage of life they occur at.
Instead I got to read about the minor irritations the wealthy consider to be the burdens of caring. Her elderly mother's knitting teacher sat in the wrong chair at the lavish dinner party in a Manhattan restaurant. Her mother doesnt react as she would like when Tillman wins a Guggenheim. Its hard to manage her mother's calender, between dermatology appointments, dance performances (they have season tickets), and weekly Swedish massages. The immigrant care staff who live with her mother for 10 years take advantage of her spacious apartment by ...having family visit there. Also, they're obese, which Tillman takes offense to. One of them steals food, which Tillman graciously ignores, and doesn't dwell on the fact she pays them minimum wage.
Tillman spends a lot of pages on the draining effect this has on her life, the exhaust of labour, but what exactly does she do? Pay other people to do things she would rather not? Accompany her mother to doctor's appointments? Visit, sometimes?
Its well written. I think she really captured her own experience. And i think its a million miles away from the reality of caregiving for the vast majority of us who don't have 24/7 care available, or the space and time to feel ambivalent about any of it.
Instead I got to read about the minor irritations the wealthy consider to be the burdens of caring. Her elderly mother's knitting teacher sat in the wrong chair at the lavish dinner party in a Manhattan restaurant. Her mother doesnt react as she would like when Tillman wins a Guggenheim. Its hard to manage her mother's calender, between dermatology appointments, dance performances (they have season tickets), and weekly Swedish massages. The immigrant care staff who live with her mother for 10 years take advantage of her spacious apartment by ...having family visit there. Also, they're obese, which Tillman takes offense to. One of them steals food, which Tillman graciously ignores, and doesn't dwell on the fact she pays them minimum wage.
Tillman spends a lot of pages on the draining effect this has on her life, the exhaust of labour, but what exactly does she do? Pay other people to do things she would rather not? Accompany her mother to doctor's appointments? Visit, sometimes?
Its well written. I think she really captured her own experience. And i think its a million miles away from the reality of caregiving for the vast majority of us who don't have 24/7 care available, or the space and time to feel ambivalent about any of it.
June 5, 2023
It's a hard, but important read, especially for those who are providing care for their own parents. It's a reminder that relationships are hard, that they change, that we change. It's an acknowledgment that caregiving is fraught with moments of tenderness and ambivalence, and that you are not alone in these feelings.
September 16, 2022
Tillman is unflinching and this was at times an uncomfortable read (as in, things we don't want to think about), but I felt it necessary. Her final chapter made me wonder if she's familiar with Sallie Tisdale's work on dying (I assume she is).
September 18, 2022
Beautifully written memoir of the years Lynne Tillman and her sisters cared for their mother during her physical and mental decline, 11 years that culminate in her death. It is as bleak as it sounds.
I’m not sure who I would recommend this to other than people going through it. Its like recommending Styron’s “Darkness Visible” or encouraging someone to watch “Shindler’s List.” It is incredibly done but it never feels like a good time to take that deep breath and jump in.
I’m not sure who I would recommend this to other than people going through it. Its like recommending Styron’s “Darkness Visible” or encouraging someone to watch “Shindler’s List.” It is incredibly done but it never feels like a good time to take that deep breath and jump in.
November 19, 2023
Unsentimental! I appreciated that.
I read a lot of grief memoirs, it turns out.
I read a lot of grief memoirs, it turns out.
June 6, 2024
I like how simple it is yet very real. Sex and the city when you are over 90 years old
November 1, 2022
Difficult story of a tough duty that so many middle-aged people (disproportionately women) have to shoulder, long-term caregiving for a cognitively impaired parent. Takes a while for them to get a diagnosis of author's mom, and that part was confusing. I think the gist was that they think she had normal pressure hydrocephalus, which is treatable, but screwups along the way made the diagnosis delayed so much that full recovery wasn't possible anymore, and then eventually she may have had Alzheimer's as well? Anyway, it became an 11-year saga for the author and her sisters and a revolving door of home health aides, and the recap of how tough that life can be was well-described.
Beyond that.......interesting style of writing and perspective on people. Author does not come off as warm or amiable, in general let alone in her view of her Mom. Sort of stilted (in my reading) construction in which she refers to her sisters as "Carolina sister" and "New York sister" throughout seemed distancing.
And she really didn't care for her Mom, reportedly narcissistic, competitive, unloving, and more. "About Mother, I never felt guilty. Anything I gave her was more than she deserved" (p. 83).
There are a lot of passages like that, and i get it, families are complicated, and it sounds as if they had a troubled relationship her whole life. But the misanthropy extended to minor characters was really awkward to read about -- concluding for instance "I really disliked her" about someone who sat at the wrong place at a birthday party (p. 104), "I never felt the same about her again" regarding someone who "destroyed the moment" (p. 128) by joining your conversational group when you only wanted to talk to the other people, and so on and so on. Fires one home health aide after another and trashes them in the book...... Just overall very disagreeable.
But she's writing about caregiving, not asking me to come hang out at her social gatherings, and it's a good book about her Mom's painfully slow demise.
Beyond that.......interesting style of writing and perspective on people. Author does not come off as warm or amiable, in general let alone in her view of her Mom. Sort of stilted (in my reading) construction in which she refers to her sisters as "Carolina sister" and "New York sister" throughout seemed distancing.
And she really didn't care for her Mom, reportedly narcissistic, competitive, unloving, and more. "About Mother, I never felt guilty. Anything I gave her was more than she deserved" (p. 83).
There are a lot of passages like that, and i get it, families are complicated, and it sounds as if they had a troubled relationship her whole life. But the misanthropy extended to minor characters was really awkward to read about -- concluding for instance "I really disliked her" about someone who sat at the wrong place at a birthday party (p. 104), "I never felt the same about her again" regarding someone who "destroyed the moment" (p. 128) by joining your conversational group when you only wanted to talk to the other people, and so on and so on. Fires one home health aide after another and trashes them in the book...... Just overall very disagreeable.
But she's writing about caregiving, not asking me to come hang out at her social gatherings, and it's a good book about her Mom's painfully slow demise.
January 12, 2023
The author is so bitter and cynical. :(
I get that she dislikes her mother (perhaps for good reason), which makes her want to operate from a place of conscience and not her heart. Still, it was difficult to read a book almost dedicated to criticizing her mother and the people important to her. It’s as if the author’s dysfunctional experiences have sucked the joy out of her life to the point where she looks at almost everyone with disdain (including those she’s able to muster some momentary sympathy and appreciation for). She doesn’t delve into her childhood and the relationships in her life (and she doesn’t have to!). But, it’s clear that she is harboring a lot of hurt because of her context. Later, she even regrets sacrificing over a decade of her life caring for her mother.
I wish the author a good life and healing. I ultimately hope she relieves herself of her fascination with death and turns that towards life!
There are some important lessons in this book about geriatric care and what to expect, but not nearly as much as I was hoping for.
(The Postmortem chapter repeated verbatim or in paraphrased form entire paragraphs and incidents mentioned in previous chapters. How do the editors justify this?).
I get that she dislikes her mother (perhaps for good reason), which makes her want to operate from a place of conscience and not her heart. Still, it was difficult to read a book almost dedicated to criticizing her mother and the people important to her. It’s as if the author’s dysfunctional experiences have sucked the joy out of her life to the point where she looks at almost everyone with disdain (including those she’s able to muster some momentary sympathy and appreciation for). She doesn’t delve into her childhood and the relationships in her life (and she doesn’t have to!). But, it’s clear that she is harboring a lot of hurt because of her context. Later, she even regrets sacrificing over a decade of her life caring for her mother.
I wish the author a good life and healing. I ultimately hope she relieves herself of her fascination with death and turns that towards life!
There are some important lessons in this book about geriatric care and what to expect, but not nearly as much as I was hoping for.
(The Postmortem chapter repeated verbatim or in paraphrased form entire paragraphs and incidents mentioned in previous chapters. How do the editors justify this?).
November 28, 2022
I like a lot about this book - the brutal honesty, the confusion of what to do next for mother. A great intro on the nature of memoir, and some killer lines - the nice coffee in a terrible hospital system as “lipstick on a pig.”
But through the first half - I didn’t finish it - I found there to be an incredible lack of the central figure: mother. She is an almost voiceless shade, and there’s very little empathy given to her interior world. Interesting lines like the mother saying “I miss sex” are given and forgotten - wouldn’t it be more interesting to dwell on that line?
What’s ultimately losing my patience is the treatment of the live in nurses. Pay all the lip service you want to classicism and the long reaching effects of colonialism - she treats these characters terribly, angry that they aren’t preforming a minimum wage job she hints she would commit suicide if she herself had to do, with absolutely perfection.
Didn’t finish, 2/10 - for the above reasons, she’s a good writer.
But through the first half - I didn’t finish it - I found there to be an incredible lack of the central figure: mother. She is an almost voiceless shade, and there’s very little empathy given to her interior world. Interesting lines like the mother saying “I miss sex” are given and forgotten - wouldn’t it be more interesting to dwell on that line?
What’s ultimately losing my patience is the treatment of the live in nurses. Pay all the lip service you want to classicism and the long reaching effects of colonialism - she treats these characters terribly, angry that they aren’t preforming a minimum wage job she hints she would commit suicide if she herself had to do, with absolutely perfection.
Didn’t finish, 2/10 - for the above reasons, she’s a good writer.
October 23, 2022
This is a memoir written by a daughter who had taken care of her mother for 12 years, until her death. The mother lived with paid caregivers during this time and the daughter had two sisters who also helped with the care. I was interested in it initially because her mother was diagnosed with NPH, Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, an unusual disease that a family member of mine has. I did learn more about this disease from the story. However the style the author chose was, I thought, difficult to follow. I featured abrupt, short sentences, and oblique references that never explained exactly what was going on. The author seemed ambivalent in her descriptions and her feelings for her mother and I hope writing this book helped her come to terms with those feelings.
September 5, 2022
I'm sorry. This was almost the worst book I've ever read. Clinical, distant writing. I dont know a single soul who is not ambivalent about their mother. Show it to us, dont just drown us in medical jargon......
August 21, 2022
An open an honest account of taking care of her dying mother.
December 8, 2022
I just couldn't get past the completely egocentric daughter writing about her completely egocentric mother.
April 26, 2024
I had to read this for a Women Writing Resistance class and, to be honest, I really was not impressed. I expect a lot from a seasoned writer, so I may be a little harsher on this memoir than usual, but I genuinely feel like Tillman does not do this incredibly interesting topic justice.
In this memoir, Lynne Tillman explores her experience caring for her mother for 11 years as she suffers from Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. This is inherently interesting subject matter because of the role reversal that occurs between the mother and daughter upon the mother nearing death. It’s even more interesting given that Tillman openly acknowledges that she does not love her mother. This raises questions about responsibility and guilt felt by children of inadequate parents.
However, I feel like Tillman never fully interrogates these questions and feelings. She drops lines about how she doesn’t love her mother and how she felt relief after her death, but refuses to expand on anything. It overall feels like she is holding back and is not willing to do the hard work of digging deeper. I’ve read numerous mother-daughter memoirs and if there’s one thing that’s required, it’s the willingness to attempt to ask AND answer the hard questions. Most often these lie in childhood, which Tillman discusses very little of. She shows us how her mother was a harmful figure in her life through adulthood, but rarely discuses her childhood. It is clear that there is pain here, but Tillman doesn’t seem interested/ready to explore this. I find this even stranger considering Tillman discusses working with a psychoanalyst for her mental health, so she should have experience digging into her childhood. Psychoanalysis goes very well with the mother-daughter memoir (Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, for example), so it’s a shame that Tillman didn’t push deeper into this territory.
Another thing, I think Tillman is just a very unlikeable person. This has nothing to do with her honest feelings or behavior towards her mother. Daughters are 100% allowed to hate their mothers. It’s more so how she talks about and treats others. For example, she spends a lengthy amount of time discusses the care takers who did much of the work in the 11 years of her mother’s sickness. She mentions how these women were almost all women of color and even undocumented. She then explains how wrong she feels about this now in attempt to acknowledge her privilege. This felt so performative to me, and I really don’t think Tillman has consciously considered these issues. It felt more like she was trying to make herself look like a better person than she truly is. Because Tillman is not a nice person to anyone. The way she describes others and her feelings toward them is often rude. She mentions disliking many people for no reason at all. Some may praise her for honestly admitting these things, but I feel her honesty means very little. Tillman comes off as narcissistic as her mother, which she likely hasn’t realized yet because of her hatred towards her. The truth is, the daughter who hates her mother to such an intense degree will fail to realize when she has become her mother. This is something Tillman would have realized had she dug deeper.
Final critique, I detest Tillman’s usage of photographs in this memoir. I am all for found media in writing, however, it has to have a purpose. The medical photos Tillman includes make sense, as well as the body bag that divides the sections. But, after a certain point, the photos just felt random. At one point there was a stock image, at another a picture of Bob Ross. These were not needed and added nothing to the piece as a whole.
I guess I’ll be fair now and point out that memoir wasn’t all bad. It’s quite informative on the health condition, Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, and on the process of dying. I learned a lot about the logistics of dying, which is worth while to know. I also appreciated how Tillman acknowledged how her experiences of her mother and her death were completely unique to her. It’s very true that perspective of a situation varies by the person, so I’m glad Tillman could acknowledge that at least.
In this memoir, Lynne Tillman explores her experience caring for her mother for 11 years as she suffers from Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. This is inherently interesting subject matter because of the role reversal that occurs between the mother and daughter upon the mother nearing death. It’s even more interesting given that Tillman openly acknowledges that she does not love her mother. This raises questions about responsibility and guilt felt by children of inadequate parents.
However, I feel like Tillman never fully interrogates these questions and feelings. She drops lines about how she doesn’t love her mother and how she felt relief after her death, but refuses to expand on anything. It overall feels like she is holding back and is not willing to do the hard work of digging deeper. I’ve read numerous mother-daughter memoirs and if there’s one thing that’s required, it’s the willingness to attempt to ask AND answer the hard questions. Most often these lie in childhood, which Tillman discusses very little of. She shows us how her mother was a harmful figure in her life through adulthood, but rarely discuses her childhood. It is clear that there is pain here, but Tillman doesn’t seem interested/ready to explore this. I find this even stranger considering Tillman discusses working with a psychoanalyst for her mental health, so she should have experience digging into her childhood. Psychoanalysis goes very well with the mother-daughter memoir (Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, for example), so it’s a shame that Tillman didn’t push deeper into this territory.
Another thing, I think Tillman is just a very unlikeable person. This has nothing to do with her honest feelings or behavior towards her mother. Daughters are 100% allowed to hate their mothers. It’s more so how she talks about and treats others. For example, she spends a lengthy amount of time discusses the care takers who did much of the work in the 11 years of her mother’s sickness. She mentions how these women were almost all women of color and even undocumented. She then explains how wrong she feels about this now in attempt to acknowledge her privilege. This felt so performative to me, and I really don’t think Tillman has consciously considered these issues. It felt more like she was trying to make herself look like a better person than she truly is. Because Tillman is not a nice person to anyone. The way she describes others and her feelings toward them is often rude. She mentions disliking many people for no reason at all. Some may praise her for honestly admitting these things, but I feel her honesty means very little. Tillman comes off as narcissistic as her mother, which she likely hasn’t realized yet because of her hatred towards her. The truth is, the daughter who hates her mother to such an intense degree will fail to realize when she has become her mother. This is something Tillman would have realized had she dug deeper.
Final critique, I detest Tillman’s usage of photographs in this memoir. I am all for found media in writing, however, it has to have a purpose. The medical photos Tillman includes make sense, as well as the body bag that divides the sections. But, after a certain point, the photos just felt random. At one point there was a stock image, at another a picture of Bob Ross. These were not needed and added nothing to the piece as a whole.
I guess I’ll be fair now and point out that memoir wasn’t all bad. It’s quite informative on the health condition, Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, and on the process of dying. I learned a lot about the logistics of dying, which is worth while to know. I also appreciated how Tillman acknowledged how her experiences of her mother and her death were completely unique to her. It’s very true that perspective of a situation varies by the person, so I’m glad Tillman could acknowledge that at least.
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August 30, 2023I can’t rate this emotional philosophical journey of a book.
It’s for a person who finds themself in this caretaking abyss, but I’m not sure I understand the intended takeaway. Part therapy for the writer. Part cautionary tale. Part guidebook. The writing style felt so detached for a book like this, which might make sense but felt awkward to me. Example: “I don’t remember seeing Mother and him talking. Maybe they did.” But it still draws on and out so many emotions. Maybe it’s like a mirror?
I’m always appreciative when a book sheds some light on Hydrocephalus and its ridiculous diagnostic confusion and dated treatments. And it did a good job of it…covering multiple shunt revisions, hospital shift changes and occasional medical incompetence. Indeed, hospital staff can be suspicious of family when you have a frequent patient. Also, the observation, “Nothing happens in hospitals over the weekend.” Truth!
Some of it actually triggered some PTSD from experiences in my own family.
The book structure bothered me though. It just jumps right in, which is gripping but abrupt. And her relationship with caregivers was weird. Sadly, Tillman feels deeply damaged beyond what is discussed here.
Emotional, pervasive themes:
- Frustrations of depending on other skilled people as caregivers.
- Sacrificing parts of yourself.
- Evolving familial relationships
- Importance of self-advocacy in these settings.
——
“I will say, without caution, when a parent becomes dependent, a family is inundated with surprising, bewildering, and constant, complicated issues. Never-before-faced issues. It will be shocked by the magnitude and mystery and consequence of this new and old fact of life. Unforeseeable and nasty accidents and diagnoses present themselves, and families may do research or react impulsively, they may deliberate or become numb with trepidation. “
…
“The unspoken and unconscious emerge from historical and psychological relationships with parents and siblings. All of this history affects individual attitudes and choices, which can vitiate and deflate everyone involved. Charged feelings lurk in interpretations and decisions, the terrain is treacherous, and bombs from previous wars detonate under the intensity of deeply felt emotions. A family or group of friends will work together for the greater good of the patient, or it will fall apart from divisiveness. Many do. We sisters, her daughters, held together, our goal to keep Mother alive and as well as could be expected, for as long as possible.”
——
“Irrationality proves rationality dumb, telling Mother no man had been there was in fact silly. Being rational is dumb when challenging the irrational—nothing convinces. It’s especially unreasonable to attempt to enforce rationality on someone who has lost some of her power to reason. Mother’s repetitious questions were maddening.”
Yes yes yes
——
“Each of us sisters had a different mother and father. It’s remarkable and true that siblings experience their parents differently, and each can say, “That wasn’t how he was with me,” or “She liked you better,” and “We had different parents,” the main source of disorder among them. It is confounding to comprehend just how different parental differences can be.”
It’s for a person who finds themself in this caretaking abyss, but I’m not sure I understand the intended takeaway. Part therapy for the writer. Part cautionary tale. Part guidebook. The writing style felt so detached for a book like this, which might make sense but felt awkward to me. Example: “I don’t remember seeing Mother and him talking. Maybe they did.” But it still draws on and out so many emotions. Maybe it’s like a mirror?
I’m always appreciative when a book sheds some light on Hydrocephalus and its ridiculous diagnostic confusion and dated treatments. And it did a good job of it…covering multiple shunt revisions, hospital shift changes and occasional medical incompetence. Indeed, hospital staff can be suspicious of family when you have a frequent patient. Also, the observation, “Nothing happens in hospitals over the weekend.” Truth!
Some of it actually triggered some PTSD from experiences in my own family.
The book structure bothered me though. It just jumps right in, which is gripping but abrupt. And her relationship with caregivers was weird. Sadly, Tillman feels deeply damaged beyond what is discussed here.
Emotional, pervasive themes:
- Frustrations of depending on other skilled people as caregivers.
- Sacrificing parts of yourself.
- Evolving familial relationships
- Importance of self-advocacy in these settings.
——
“I will say, without caution, when a parent becomes dependent, a family is inundated with surprising, bewildering, and constant, complicated issues. Never-before-faced issues. It will be shocked by the magnitude and mystery and consequence of this new and old fact of life. Unforeseeable and nasty accidents and diagnoses present themselves, and families may do research or react impulsively, they may deliberate or become numb with trepidation. “
…
“The unspoken and unconscious emerge from historical and psychological relationships with parents and siblings. All of this history affects individual attitudes and choices, which can vitiate and deflate everyone involved. Charged feelings lurk in interpretations and decisions, the terrain is treacherous, and bombs from previous wars detonate under the intensity of deeply felt emotions. A family or group of friends will work together for the greater good of the patient, or it will fall apart from divisiveness. Many do. We sisters, her daughters, held together, our goal to keep Mother alive and as well as could be expected, for as long as possible.”
——
“Irrationality proves rationality dumb, telling Mother no man had been there was in fact silly. Being rational is dumb when challenging the irrational—nothing convinces. It’s especially unreasonable to attempt to enforce rationality on someone who has lost some of her power to reason. Mother’s repetitious questions were maddening.”
Yes yes yes
——
“Each of us sisters had a different mother and father. It’s remarkable and true that siblings experience their parents differently, and each can say, “That wasn’t how he was with me,” or “She liked you better,” and “We had different parents,” the main source of disorder among them. It is confounding to comprehend just how different parental differences can be.”
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