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The Year My Mother Came Back
For the first time in decades I’m remembering Mom, all of her--the wonderful and terrible things about her that I’ve cast out of my thoughts for so long. I’m still struggling to prevent these memories from erupting from their subterranean depths. Trying to hold back the flood. I can’t, not today. The levees break.
Thirty years after her death, Alice Eve Cohen’s mother appears to her, seemingly in the flesh, and continues to do so during the hardest year Alice has had to face: the year her youngest daughter needs a harrowing surgery, her eldest daughter decides to reunite with her birth mother, and Alice herself receives a daunting diagnosis. As it turns out, it’s entirely possible for the people we’ve lost to come back to us when we need them the most.
Although letting her mother back into her life is not an easy thing, Alice approaches it with humor, intelligence, and honesty. What she learns is that she must revisit her childhood and allow herself to be a daughter once more in order to take care of her own girls. Understanding and forgiving her mother’s parenting transgressions leads her to accept her own and to realize that she doesn’t have to be perfect to be a good mother.
Thirty years after her death, Alice Eve Cohen’s mother appears to her, seemingly in the flesh, and continues to do so during the hardest year Alice has had to face: the year her youngest daughter needs a harrowing surgery, her eldest daughter decides to reunite with her birth mother, and Alice herself receives a daunting diagnosis. As it turns out, it’s entirely possible for the people we’ve lost to come back to us when we need them the most.
Although letting her mother back into her life is not an easy thing, Alice approaches it with humor, intelligence, and honesty. What she learns is that she must revisit her childhood and allow herself to be a daughter once more in order to take care of her own girls. Understanding and forgiving her mother’s parenting transgressions leads her to accept her own and to realize that she doesn’t have to be perfect to be a good mother.
276 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2015
36 people are currently reading
947 people want to read
About the author
Alice Eve Cohen
4 books32 followersAlice Eve Cohen is a writer and solo theatre artist. Her new memoir, THE YEAR MY MOTHER CAME BACK, is published by Algonquin Books, March 31, 2015. Winner of Elle's Magazine Grand Prize for Nonfiction, Oprah Magazine’s 25 Best Books of Summer, and Salon's Best Books of the Year for her memoir, "What I Thought I Knew" (Penguin). She has written for Nickelodeon, CTW, and CBS, and has toured her solo shows nationally and internationally. Alice has received fellowships and grants from the NYS Council on the Arts and the NEA. She graduated from Princeton University and got her MFA from The New School. Alice teaches at The New School and lives with her family in New York City. She is currently working on a novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
April 12, 2016
“I’ve never forgiven myself—or my mother—for the crime of maternal ambivalence. I forgive my mother. I forgive myself.” There’s some gentle magic realism to this mother-daughter memoir. The ‘year’ in the title has two meanings: first was the last year of Louise Cohen’s life, when she and Alice finally reached a kind of détente in their tense relationship. At their last meeting, at an Indian restaurant two weeks before Louise died suddenly of an aneurysm, she told Alice she was happy for the first time (something you’re never supposed to do because of the Evil Eye). That was when her mother came back to herself, as it were.
But then, more than two decades later, Louise kept coming back during the difficult year that forms the kernel of the memoir, a year in which Cohen’s younger daughter, Eliana, had a leg-lengthening surgery; her adopted older daughter, Julia, met her birth mother, Zoe; and Cohen herself underwent a lumpectomy and radiation for breast cancer. During radiation sessions, when she had to lie face-down, perfectly still, for 10 minutes at a time, her mother would appear and talk to her, mostly reassuring her that she was doing a good enough job. “I’m acclimating to the sufficiency of imperfection, settling for being adequate, which is not so bad, in the scheme of things. My mother taught me that. She’s still teaching me that.”
Louise was a raving liberal, a feminist who took her daughters on antiwar protests and staged a sit-on on rich folks’ private beach. She completed a master’s thesis on inequalities in housing and spent years on a never-finished PhD. The duties of a household, even including motherhood, often seemed like nothing but roadblocks: “The dishes. The dishes! The goddamn dishes! No wonder women don’t succeed,” she once exploded. (My favorite lines of the whole book!)
“I am a magnet for medical ironies,” Cohen laments, and a first was that she hit puberty and developed large breasts just at the time her mother had a radical mastectomy to remove hers. This may well have been the initial source of their friction. Female organs and hormones connect past and present in Cohen’s family, even as they cause complications. The synthetic estrogen Louise took to prevent miscarriages increased her risk of breast cancer and infertility, two curses transmitted to Alice. Doctors told her she would never get pregnant, thus she and her husband adopted; years later she had a surprise pregnancy and, perhaps because of having been on HRT for 14 years, her daughter was born with one leg several inches shorter than the other. “I bet I’m the only woman in history...to have sued for both infertility and fertility,” Cohen exclaims. “Oh, God, how I wish my multigenerational maternal legacy didn’t have such painful symmetries.”
Wry and heartfelt, this is a wonderful memoir about motherhood in all its variations and complexities. The magic realism is an added delight. Whatever your relationship, past or present, with your mother, this would be a fun one to read as Mother’s Day approaches.
Related reading: New Life, No Instructions by Gail Caldwell and What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas, plus any of Anne Lamott’s memoirs.
But then, more than two decades later, Louise kept coming back during the difficult year that forms the kernel of the memoir, a year in which Cohen’s younger daughter, Eliana, had a leg-lengthening surgery; her adopted older daughter, Julia, met her birth mother, Zoe; and Cohen herself underwent a lumpectomy and radiation for breast cancer. During radiation sessions, when she had to lie face-down, perfectly still, for 10 minutes at a time, her mother would appear and talk to her, mostly reassuring her that she was doing a good enough job. “I’m acclimating to the sufficiency of imperfection, settling for being adequate, which is not so bad, in the scheme of things. My mother taught me that. She’s still teaching me that.”
Louise was a raving liberal, a feminist who took her daughters on antiwar protests and staged a sit-on on rich folks’ private beach. She completed a master’s thesis on inequalities in housing and spent years on a never-finished PhD. The duties of a household, even including motherhood, often seemed like nothing but roadblocks: “The dishes. The dishes! The goddamn dishes! No wonder women don’t succeed,” she once exploded. (My favorite lines of the whole book!)
“I am a magnet for medical ironies,” Cohen laments, and a first was that she hit puberty and developed large breasts just at the time her mother had a radical mastectomy to remove hers. This may well have been the initial source of their friction. Female organs and hormones connect past and present in Cohen’s family, even as they cause complications. The synthetic estrogen Louise took to prevent miscarriages increased her risk of breast cancer and infertility, two curses transmitted to Alice. Doctors told her she would never get pregnant, thus she and her husband adopted; years later she had a surprise pregnancy and, perhaps because of having been on HRT for 14 years, her daughter was born with one leg several inches shorter than the other. “I bet I’m the only woman in history...to have sued for both infertility and fertility,” Cohen exclaims. “Oh, God, how I wish my multigenerational maternal legacy didn’t have such painful symmetries.”
Wry and heartfelt, this is a wonderful memoir about motherhood in all its variations and complexities. The magic realism is an added delight. Whatever your relationship, past or present, with your mother, this would be a fun one to read as Mother’s Day approaches.
Related reading: New Life, No Instructions by Gail Caldwell and What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas, plus any of Anne Lamott’s memoirs.
November 18, 2015
Beautifully written memoir about a mother and daughter.
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March 19, 2015March seems to be a theme of motherhood so far, and this memoir from Alice Eve Cohen adds a bittersweet note. Cohen struggles on several fronts: her daughter undergoes a procedure to cure a birth defect that Cohen feels was her fault, due to cancer and cancer treatments; her adoptive daughter, grown now, reconnects with her birth mother. Cohen turns to the memory of her trailblazing feminist mother, who also battled cancer, for strength, wisdom, and closure. I love a fiercely honest memoir; I’d be glad to put this on my shelf next to Joan Didion and Ariel Gore.
From 4 Small Press Books to Read In March: http://bookriot.com/2015/03/19/4-smal...
From 4 Small Press Books to Read In March: http://bookriot.com/2015/03/19/4-smal...
April 2, 2015
Alice Through the Looking Glass: My Mother, Myself
Alice Eve Cohen's graceful memoir reminds us that our mother is the first mirror in whose reflection we come to see ourselves. Whether flawed, cracked, or seemingly shattered, that mirror reflects a light which never fades completely and may come to shine even brighter, helping daughters put life in perspective. Cohen's frank, funny, and flawless language sheds light on the nature of that reappearing, shape-shifting memory guiding her through a motherhood of her own. I loved this book.
Alice Eve Cohen's graceful memoir reminds us that our mother is the first mirror in whose reflection we come to see ourselves. Whether flawed, cracked, or seemingly shattered, that mirror reflects a light which never fades completely and may come to shine even brighter, helping daughters put life in perspective. Cohen's frank, funny, and flawless language sheds light on the nature of that reappearing, shape-shifting memory guiding her through a motherhood of her own. I loved this book.
August 26, 2021
4.25 stars
Cohen lost her mother years ago but finds she needs and misses her when she has a difficult year. She weaves stories about her mother as she recalls the tough year she had. I really enjoyed her spare writing of an emotional story.
Cohen lost her mother years ago but finds she needs and misses her when she has a difficult year. She weaves stories about her mother as she recalls the tough year she had. I really enjoyed her spare writing of an emotional story.
June 11, 2015
I didn’t know what I was getting into when I picked this book up. Most memoirs have a yawn factor that this book was lacking. The Year My Mother Came Back was so close to home for me. Not that I lost my mother, but that I think every woman can relate to loosing her mother at some point in her life journey.
Alice shares the story of her mother coming back to her. She is long gone, literally, from this world. Her echos carry Alice through a very tough time in her life. Told in Alice’s POV, we learn about her present struggles and the reason for the rift between her and her mother. Her mother died at the age of 57 of a cerebral hemorrhage when Alice was 22 and fresh out of college. After surviving breast cancer and a double mastectomy when Alice hit puberty, Alice’s mother came home a shell of the woman she once was, and Alice and her mother drifted apart, as mothers and daughters do. At their last meeting, her mother said she was truly happy for the first time in a long time. Thirty one years later Alice finds herself talking to her mother through her own motherly difficulties. Her adopted daughter is finding her birth mother and going off to college, and her biological daughter is going into surgery to correct a birth defect. On top of all of this, Alice is diagnosed with breast cancer herself.
"Memories flood into the space left empty for thirty years. I don’t resist. I want my mother with me. At this moment I don’t need to be a mother, I just want to be a daughter."
This book is filled with all the wonder that is being a mother, and all the pain of being a daughter. I couldn’t help but to reflect my own relationship to my mother, and the one I hope to have with my daughters. The struggle to be everything to your children is so real. This book might seem to be about loss, but it is much more a story of love. Throughout some of the story Alice is recounting how she tried to memorialize her mother’s life with a play called Oklahoma after she graduated college. The story flip flops through time as Alice tries to figure out why her mother is back. She mulls over what it means to be a woman, how her mother might have felt after her double mastectomy, and what it really means to have children. This book encompasses so much that touched me.
I honestly didn’t realize when I picked this book, that the author’s mother was dead. I didn’t know how swept up I was in their relationship until the last chapters, which left me a sobbing mess. Not that it is meant to draw that out of the reader. It is not meant to be a tear jerker, at least I don’t think so. I am not sorry I read this and it made me cry bit fat crocodile tears, I am just sorry that I can’t hug my mom right now and tell her all the things I need to after reflecting on our relationship. This book is timeless and thought-provoking. It is an in-depth look into the complexities of motherhood. This book is for every mother, and everyone that has a mother.
Alice shares the story of her mother coming back to her. She is long gone, literally, from this world. Her echos carry Alice through a very tough time in her life. Told in Alice’s POV, we learn about her present struggles and the reason for the rift between her and her mother. Her mother died at the age of 57 of a cerebral hemorrhage when Alice was 22 and fresh out of college. After surviving breast cancer and a double mastectomy when Alice hit puberty, Alice’s mother came home a shell of the woman she once was, and Alice and her mother drifted apart, as mothers and daughters do. At their last meeting, her mother said she was truly happy for the first time in a long time. Thirty one years later Alice finds herself talking to her mother through her own motherly difficulties. Her adopted daughter is finding her birth mother and going off to college, and her biological daughter is going into surgery to correct a birth defect. On top of all of this, Alice is diagnosed with breast cancer herself.
"Memories flood into the space left empty for thirty years. I don’t resist. I want my mother with me. At this moment I don’t need to be a mother, I just want to be a daughter."
This book is filled with all the wonder that is being a mother, and all the pain of being a daughter. I couldn’t help but to reflect my own relationship to my mother, and the one I hope to have with my daughters. The struggle to be everything to your children is so real. This book might seem to be about loss, but it is much more a story of love. Throughout some of the story Alice is recounting how she tried to memorialize her mother’s life with a play called Oklahoma after she graduated college. The story flip flops through time as Alice tries to figure out why her mother is back. She mulls over what it means to be a woman, how her mother might have felt after her double mastectomy, and what it really means to have children. This book encompasses so much that touched me.
I honestly didn’t realize when I picked this book, that the author’s mother was dead. I didn’t know how swept up I was in their relationship until the last chapters, which left me a sobbing mess. Not that it is meant to draw that out of the reader. It is not meant to be a tear jerker, at least I don’t think so. I am not sorry I read this and it made me cry bit fat crocodile tears, I am just sorry that I can’t hug my mom right now and tell her all the things I need to after reflecting on our relationship. This book is timeless and thought-provoking. It is an in-depth look into the complexities of motherhood. This book is for every mother, and everyone that has a mother.
March 30, 2015
I loved this book. It's part coming of age(s) - into adulthood and into that other age, meaning aging. It's also about relationships between mothers and daughters - your own mother and that with your own daughter. Add in angst we all have in life, cultural issues, survival and grief and you find a very powerful memoir.
October 28, 2017
It wasn't bad, I just didn't emotionally connect with this book in any way.
October 31, 2014
In a year when the author was treated for breast cancer, the author grapples with what it means to be a "perfect" mother as she engages in "conversations" with her dead mother whose own struggles with breast cancer devastated their relationship and corroded the trust and love between them. In this memoir, Alice Cohen lovingly and movingly describes how she comes to accept her own limitations and imperfections through her hard-won reconciliation with her own "imperfect"mother, a complex woman who struggled with the constrictions of being a wife and mother. The Year My Mother Came Back perfectly captured my own longing for my deceased mother and the complicated, loving, hard relationship between us. It is a moving tribute to all mothers and daughter who seek to understand and forgive and love each other.
I received this review copy from Netgalley and appreciate the opportunity to review it.
I received this review copy from Netgalley and appreciate the opportunity to review it.
March 1, 2015
Alice Eve Cohen has written an open honest memoir a memoir a bout a year in her life.A year when she undergoes surgery for breast cancer ,her older daughter enters Princeton&reconnects with her birth mom. To add to the turmoil &trauma her youngest born with a shorter leg due to a birth defect is going to under go surgery to lengthen her leg.In the midst of all that Alice's mother her dead mother comes back hearing her voice in her head reliving her difficult relationship with her mother.a moving memoir raw with honest emotions.highly recommend.
April 3, 2015
I loved Alice Cohen’s first book - full of insights, pain and joy - so I knew that once I started reading “The Year My Mother Came Back,” I wouldn’t be able to put it down. From the agonizing double arcs of ambivalent motherhood to its deeply moving ending, this healing story dives into the heart of what pulls mothers and daughters apart, and what brings them together.
- Alexis Krasilovsky, Co-Author, "Shooting Women: Behind the Camera, Around the World"
- Alexis Krasilovsky, Co-Author, "Shooting Women: Behind the Camera, Around the World"
July 15, 2015
I had a hard time relating to most of this book. Cohen was upset when her mom appeared 30 years after she died. I would give anything to see my mom again and Cohen told her mom to go away. BUT this book is such a gem. I can't do it justice but it definitely is about mother's relationships with their daughters, and daughters relationships with their mothers.
April 2, 2015
Alice Eve Cohen has a rich, funny and truly contemporary voice. Each book she pens brings me deeper into her fan club. I can't wait to see what's next.
August 25, 2017
Interesting. This book was provocative--creating thoughts about my role as a daughter and my role as a mother. The idea that Alice saw her relationship with her mother so differently than her sisters saw their relationships with the same mother was interesting and underscored by the differences in Alice's relationships with her daughters. My only real objection to the book was the writing; I sometimes found it difficult to know which part of Alice's life we were in, present day or years earlier with her mother.
September 11, 2025
I enjoyed this book. It is about a woman processing the death of her mother, those circumstances, and the impact that it has on the client, and on her own family (because of the ways it has impacted Alice).
It explores the author’s current life with her children and her partner. She shares about her upbringing with her siblings and parents. She writes about her experiences as a daughter, mother, and a person just trying to be the best person she can be.
It explores the author’s current life with her children and her partner. She shares about her upbringing with her siblings and parents. She writes about her experiences as a daughter, mother, and a person just trying to be the best person she can be.
June 3, 2019
From GoodReads summary of the book:
"As it turns out, it’s entirely possible for the people we’ve lost to come back to us when we need them the most."
My question:
Do they ever leave?
A nice, comfortable read.
"As it turns out, it’s entirely possible for the people we’ve lost to come back to us when we need them the most."
My question:
Do they ever leave?
A nice, comfortable read.
January 16, 2021
Could not put it down
Read this in five hours. Highly recommend, especially to women with children. So much rang true for me, and gave me new insight into what resentment, secrets, and forgiveness mean.
Read this in five hours. Highly recommend, especially to women with children. So much rang true for me, and gave me new insight into what resentment, secrets, and forgiveness mean.
May 8, 2021
Oy, the crud we choose to hold onto…
Loved the concept but kept wanting to tap her not so gently on the head
My Full Review →
Loved the concept but kept wanting to tap her not so gently on the head
My Full Review →
November 12, 2017
i liked her other memoir a lot more and they overlap. she is really reflective about her inner life, which is very interesting to me.
March 20, 2019
Moving, well written memoir expertly balancing and linking three generations of a New York artist’s family life. This book is refreshingly honest, and interesting in all its parts.
July 14, 2019
This book was alright. I did like how the author went back and forth between the past and the present.
September 30, 2019
I delighted in her writing, especially how the story fluidly moved between the story of her and her mother and her and her daughters, with remarkable similarities.
February 17, 2020
loved it.
May 13, 2023
Mother - daughter relationships are tough for some people. Good perspective on one of those tough relationships!
August 11, 2024
Alice Eve Cohen skillfully weaves the stories of her mother's cancer, her own diagnosis, her adopted daughter's search for biological parents, and her biological daughter's painful leg lengthening surgery. This is a small-sized hardback from Algonquin Chapel Hill. I can be assured when I find one of these books that I'll learn something, be entertained, or enjoy a good story.
August 15, 2025
This memoir was so moving and for me totally relatable.
July 3, 2015
While this moving memoir speaks quite explicitly to the mother/daughter dynamic, it also speaks to any close relationship where one of the people is gone. I generally don't like to give much detail away in a review, not to mention that many other reviews lay out the general events that form the heart of this work. What I would prefer to do is explain where this wonderful book took me while I was lost in the pages. This will be similar to what many others have experienced and, to a considerably smaller degree gives an idea of how this memoir works, and make no mistake, this memoir absolutely works.
My father passed away from cancer while I was in college, insisting I not put my education on hold. I went through the usual grief-like emotions upon getting the call from my mother he had died. For weeks, maybe months, I thought I grieved, and I guess I did but not nearly the way I did several years later. When I found myself in a situation that would always have made me call and talk to my father, I picked up the phone and called. It wasn't until my mother answered that I remembered he was not there any longer. While that hit me hard, and triggered what I took to be the true grief, it was the aftermath of that call that stayed with me to this day. My father did indeed help me through my difficult period. He spoke to me in my mind, through my dreams and walked me through it. In other words, he had so instilled how he thought and how he had always helped that I could "hear" him giving me advice and asking questions I would not likely have asked myself as myself.
Cohen's memoir has potentially traumatic situations through which her mother helps her, and is told in a tender yet strong manner sorely lacking in my little paragraph. But the result is the same, those we love, especially when the bond is a close one (even in spite of sometimes growing apart), will always be nearby ready to help when we are ready to accept that help. I am glad I read this book and especially thankful to have had those memories of mine rekindled.
Reviewed from an ARC made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
My father passed away from cancer while I was in college, insisting I not put my education on hold. I went through the usual grief-like emotions upon getting the call from my mother he had died. For weeks, maybe months, I thought I grieved, and I guess I did but not nearly the way I did several years later. When I found myself in a situation that would always have made me call and talk to my father, I picked up the phone and called. It wasn't until my mother answered that I remembered he was not there any longer. While that hit me hard, and triggered what I took to be the true grief, it was the aftermath of that call that stayed with me to this day. My father did indeed help me through my difficult period. He spoke to me in my mind, through my dreams and walked me through it. In other words, he had so instilled how he thought and how he had always helped that I could "hear" him giving me advice and asking questions I would not likely have asked myself as myself.
Cohen's memoir has potentially traumatic situations through which her mother helps her, and is told in a tender yet strong manner sorely lacking in my little paragraph. But the result is the same, those we love, especially when the bond is a close one (even in spite of sometimes growing apart), will always be nearby ready to help when we are ready to accept that help. I am glad I read this book and especially thankful to have had those memories of mine rekindled.
Reviewed from an ARC made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
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May 10, 2015http://www.anurseandabook.com/2015/05...
This was an engrossing read. And perfectly timed for Mother's Day.
The author is one of three daughters to a complicated woman. Alice's mother sounds like she was part of the generation that had just started to question the way woman were treated in the world, and in marriage in the eyes of society. I've always thought this had to be one of the hardest times in the world to be a woman. Now add in her fight for civil rights, along with the semi-overt anti-Semitism in their own neighborhood, and I can see why her mother seemed withdrawn and angry.
I had heard a bit about the DES daughters, but it was eye opening to see that this affected three generations in this family. To see the "cure" for a miscarriage continue to cause health issues and infertility was heartbreaking in it's irony.
I can totally identify with the way the author beat herself up for not being the perfect mother, the struggle with depression, the wanting to take your child's pain on yourself. I think most mothers can. But as she learned from her mother's visits, everyone does the best that they can with the tools that they have. And if you are doing the best you can and you truly care, that is what your kids will eventually see.
At first read, her mother's sudden death after finally declaring herself to be the happiest she's ever been was crushing. But after I had time to think about it, how wonderful that she had the chance to experience that happiness before she passed. How awful would it to be to die unhappy? Motivation for all of us in the thick of motherhood's stressors.
Great writing, great read.
Happy Mother's Day!
Thank you to Booksparks for the review copy! I'm happy to be part of the Summer Reading Challenge 2015!
This was an engrossing read. And perfectly timed for Mother's Day.
The author is one of three daughters to a complicated woman. Alice's mother sounds like she was part of the generation that had just started to question the way woman were treated in the world, and in marriage in the eyes of society. I've always thought this had to be one of the hardest times in the world to be a woman. Now add in her fight for civil rights, along with the semi-overt anti-Semitism in their own neighborhood, and I can see why her mother seemed withdrawn and angry.
I had heard a bit about the DES daughters, but it was eye opening to see that this affected three generations in this family. To see the "cure" for a miscarriage continue to cause health issues and infertility was heartbreaking in it's irony.
I can totally identify with the way the author beat herself up for not being the perfect mother, the struggle with depression, the wanting to take your child's pain on yourself. I think most mothers can. But as she learned from her mother's visits, everyone does the best that they can with the tools that they have. And if you are doing the best you can and you truly care, that is what your kids will eventually see.
At first read, her mother's sudden death after finally declaring herself to be the happiest she's ever been was crushing. But after I had time to think about it, how wonderful that she had the chance to experience that happiness before she passed. How awful would it to be to die unhappy? Motivation for all of us in the thick of motherhood's stressors.
Great writing, great read.
Happy Mother's Day!
Thank you to Booksparks for the review copy! I'm happy to be part of the Summer Reading Challenge 2015!
May 11, 2015
I don't read memoirs often, but when I do, they usually make me think of my creative writing classes in college. This was no exception. To be perfectly honest, I didn't remember that this was a memoir when I started reading because I like to go into books blind. Sure, I read the synopsis when I signed up for the review, but I'd forgotten it by the time I started reading the book. Not remembering that this was a memoir, I truly thought the author was throwing a ridiculous amount of trials at her characters. This book serves to remind me that truth is stranger than fiction, but also that characters that can't catch a single break, real or fictional, is entirely realistic. It's a good thing for me to remember when reading.
The Year my Mother Came Back resonated with me, making me think of my own family relationships. Like Alice, I am my mother's daughter, and while my mother doesn't take me door to door to campaign for equal rights for the oppressed, she is very politically active on Facebook and Twitter, and I imagine that Alice's mother would be too if she were alive today.
While I liked how past and present were interwoven through the book, it was initially rather discombobulating. When the timeline changed, it took me a minute to adjust to the shift and the new frame of mind, and the changes, while marked by breaks in the page, were typically fairly abrupt. There was generally no easing into the memories. In retrospect, it was a lot like having memories thrust on you in real life.
Overall I give this book 4 out of 5 stars because it made me feel introspective and it was relatable for me. I would definitely recommend it to just about anyone who is a daughter or who has a daughter as it provides great insight into the mother/daughter relationship.
The Year my Mother Came Back resonated with me, making me think of my own family relationships. Like Alice, I am my mother's daughter, and while my mother doesn't take me door to door to campaign for equal rights for the oppressed, she is very politically active on Facebook and Twitter, and I imagine that Alice's mother would be too if she were alive today.
While I liked how past and present were interwoven through the book, it was initially rather discombobulating. When the timeline changed, it took me a minute to adjust to the shift and the new frame of mind, and the changes, while marked by breaks in the page, were typically fairly abrupt. There was generally no easing into the memories. In retrospect, it was a lot like having memories thrust on you in real life.
Overall I give this book 4 out of 5 stars because it made me feel introspective and it was relatable for me. I would definitely recommend it to just about anyone who is a daughter or who has a daughter as it provides great insight into the mother/daughter relationship.
August 19, 2015
"The Year My Mother Came Back" is a memoir in which we get a glimpse of the trials and tribulations of mother/ daughter relationships, that most special and intricate bond. The author has lost her mother but as she is going through a difficult time with both of her own daughters as well as trying to fight cancer, her mother appears to her. The author reminisces on her relationship with her mother and her relationship with her children as their mother. Filled with gorgeous prose, this book is a fast read with a lot of weight in meaning.
Memoirs can be difficult. You have to have a compelling story and a compelling way to tell it. In this case, the author has both. The book flashes back between the past and the present (which sometimes got difficult but if you stick with it, the payoff is worth it). The author sees her mother in the present and it sends her reeling into her memories, that were not always that great.
I liked the way that the author was able to draw comparisons between her role as a daughter and her role as a mother. That role, as I am finding out as a new mother, changes so much. You go from being taken care of to being the caretaker. It is a weird jump. In the book, Cohen is taking care of her almost college age adopted daughter who discovers her biological family and her younger daughter who is going through some incredibly difficult medical issues. This is an unflinching look at the different forms that mother/ daughter relationships take. I suggest this book to those that enjoy memoirs and are fascinated by the intricacies of mother/ daughter relationships.
Memoirs can be difficult. You have to have a compelling story and a compelling way to tell it. In this case, the author has both. The book flashes back between the past and the present (which sometimes got difficult but if you stick with it, the payoff is worth it). The author sees her mother in the present and it sends her reeling into her memories, that were not always that great.
I liked the way that the author was able to draw comparisons between her role as a daughter and her role as a mother. That role, as I am finding out as a new mother, changes so much. You go from being taken care of to being the caretaker. It is a weird jump. In the book, Cohen is taking care of her almost college age adopted daughter who discovers her biological family and her younger daughter who is going through some incredibly difficult medical issues. This is an unflinching look at the different forms that mother/ daughter relationships take. I suggest this book to those that enjoy memoirs and are fascinated by the intricacies of mother/ daughter relationships.
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