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Reading My Mother Back: A Memoir in Childhood Animal Stories
An innovative memoir connecting ideas of grief, memory, and animals to illustrate the importance of storytelling.
When his mother died, Timothy C. Baker discovered that there was almost no record of her existence, and no stories that were his to tell: the only way to bring her back was through reading. Reading My Mother Back is a genre-bending memoir that explores a life marked by trauma, illness, religion, and abuse through a focus on the books Baker and his mother shared. The book combines accounts of rereading childhood classics with true and apocryphal stories of a quiet life, marked by great sorrow and great joy. The book is about grief and memory and how our childhood reading shapes the way we see the world; it’s about loneliness and the search for belonging; it’s about how ordinary lives are transfigured by storytelling.
Moving from accounts of American evangelical communities to kidney failure, from literary criticism to psychoanalysis, and from guilt to love, Baker shows how literature provides a framework for understanding our experiences, and offers a way of connecting with everything we have lost. The book illustrates how children’s animal stories bring us into a love of the world, and how acts of rereading become a way not of assuaging grief, but of bringing the past and present together. Reading My Mother Back offers a bold and personal view of why the stories we read and share matter so much. And there are bunnies.
When his mother died, Timothy C. Baker discovered that there was almost no record of her existence, and no stories that were his to tell: the only way to bring her back was through reading. Reading My Mother Back is a genre-bending memoir that explores a life marked by trauma, illness, religion, and abuse through a focus on the books Baker and his mother shared. The book combines accounts of rereading childhood classics with true and apocryphal stories of a quiet life, marked by great sorrow and great joy. The book is about grief and memory and how our childhood reading shapes the way we see the world; it’s about loneliness and the search for belonging; it’s about how ordinary lives are transfigured by storytelling.
Moving from accounts of American evangelical communities to kidney failure, from literary criticism to psychoanalysis, and from guilt to love, Baker shows how literature provides a framework for understanding our experiences, and offers a way of connecting with everything we have lost. The book illustrates how children’s animal stories bring us into a love of the world, and how acts of rereading become a way not of assuaging grief, but of bringing the past and present together. Reading My Mother Back offers a bold and personal view of why the stories we read and share matter so much. And there are bunnies.
- GenresNonfictionMemoir
168 pages, Hardcover
First published September 13, 2022
4 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Timothy C. Baker
9 books5 followersTimothy C. Baker holds a personal Chair in Scottish and Contemporary Literature at the University of Aberdeen. He has published widely on contemporary Scottish and American writing. He has completed projects on Scottish Gothic and twenty-first-century animal fiction. His current research is focused on representations of climate change and the natural world in contemporary women's writing.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 30, 2022
I have few words at hand to describe the experience of reading this book other than 'wholly comforting'. Timothy Baker taught me, briefly, during my exchange year at the University of Aberdeen. His classes were always my favourite and I learned so much from him. I was very eager to get my hands on this book, not least because my own Dad passed away recently.
Baker rereads some of my own favourite childhood books - Charlotte's Web, The Magician's Nephew, Watership Down – and discusses how the act of rereading is a way of interacting with past selves and examining who we are now. His descriptions of his relationship with his mother are beautiful and tender; and her loss is obviously deeply felt.
I've underlined so many passages from this - and I've added many books mentioned to my own reading list.
I'm so thankful that I read this when I did. I'm sure I'll revisit it again soon.
Baker rereads some of my own favourite childhood books - Charlotte's Web, The Magician's Nephew, Watership Down – and discusses how the act of rereading is a way of interacting with past selves and examining who we are now. His descriptions of his relationship with his mother are beautiful and tender; and her loss is obviously deeply felt.
I've underlined so many passages from this - and I've added many books mentioned to my own reading list.
I'm so thankful that I read this when I did. I'm sure I'll revisit it again soon.
September 19, 2022
I went into this memoir, by someone I'm online friends with, prepared to like it. It is about books and how they connect us to life and to the dead. I know Baker through a book group and have learned to trust his taste over the past few years, so I expected it to be good. I was not prepared for just how much I'd like it and how powerfully it would resonate with me.
It's part grief memoir for his mother, part memoir of reading in childhood and returning to those books later in life, both as a way of understanding/forgiving/healing himself and recreating his memories of his mother, and part excellent literary criticism. In many key ways my experience is very different than Baker's (his young religious experience had a leftward political bent I came to much later, whereas mine was framed in mostly apolitical but still conservative terms) but there were many odd intersections. He too apologizes/used to apologize too much, and has an uneasy relation to the faith of his youth. I seem to have drifted from mine much later than he, but he describes the loss of community that comes along with that in a way that really devastated me.
And the books! I've read and reread many of these, and hadn't read others. But that feeling of using books as a way to think about my own life in ways both healthy and not is so familiar. It made me want to revisit The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin (though he may have put me off eventually reading the sequel, even though I admit I'm fascinated) and Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. And at least the Pan chapter of Wind in the Willows. And to finally read Watership Down and the Virginia Woolf books I have unread on the shelf.
And it's an amazing tribute to his mother and her experience, which, despite the ways in which he's had to reconstruct much of what he doesn't know about that experience, has shaped him profoundly. Highly recommended!
It's part grief memoir for his mother, part memoir of reading in childhood and returning to those books later in life, both as a way of understanding/forgiving/healing himself and recreating his memories of his mother, and part excellent literary criticism. In many key ways my experience is very different than Baker's (his young religious experience had a leftward political bent I came to much later, whereas mine was framed in mostly apolitical but still conservative terms) but there were many odd intersections. He too apologizes/used to apologize too much, and has an uneasy relation to the faith of his youth. I seem to have drifted from mine much later than he, but he describes the loss of community that comes along with that in a way that really devastated me.
And the books! I've read and reread many of these, and hadn't read others. But that feeling of using books as a way to think about my own life in ways both healthy and not is so familiar. It made me want to revisit The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin (though he may have put me off eventually reading the sequel, even though I admit I'm fascinated) and Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. And at least the Pan chapter of Wind in the Willows. And to finally read Watership Down and the Virginia Woolf books I have unread on the shelf.
And it's an amazing tribute to his mother and her experience, which, despite the ways in which he's had to reconstruct much of what he doesn't know about that experience, has shaped him profoundly. Highly recommended!
April 26, 2024
The sort of book that makes you feel as though the author is in the room having a conversation or reading with you. I cried. I texted my mom. I thought of the stories that shaped me and the ones that shaped you.
November 22, 2022
'You may not know this book, just as you may not know my mother, but I hope you have a book like it, a loved one like her.'
I first encountered Baker through his academic writing on animals, and so enjoyed his approach and style that I was thrilled to hear about the publication of this memoir. Each chapter in this book is named after a children's book and visits an episode or a theme in Baker's relationship with his mother, drawing connections and exploring both together. It is decidedly genre-bending in this way, incorporating very personal stories with insight into children's fiction, ideas from theorists like Melanie Klein, and the work of other writers including Alison Bechdel and Virginia Woolf. It is beautiful. Clever and so full of heart, Reading My Mother Back is an emotional exploration of memory, grief, and re-reading that I highly recommend to anyone who reads, and anyone who loves.
I first encountered Baker through his academic writing on animals, and so enjoyed his approach and style that I was thrilled to hear about the publication of this memoir. Each chapter in this book is named after a children's book and visits an episode or a theme in Baker's relationship with his mother, drawing connections and exploring both together. It is decidedly genre-bending in this way, incorporating very personal stories with insight into children's fiction, ideas from theorists like Melanie Klein, and the work of other writers including Alison Bechdel and Virginia Woolf. It is beautiful. Clever and so full of heart, Reading My Mother Back is an emotional exploration of memory, grief, and re-reading that I highly recommend to anyone who reads, and anyone who loves.
September 18, 2022
Absolutely brilliant. I don't think I've been this enthralled with a book since Mark Doty's Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. And yes my name is in the acknowledgements, but I can honestly say that if it weren't, and if Tim were a stranger, I'd still feel the same way. This is a smart, gorgeous, cathartic thing.
September 2, 2024
„There was a story that could explain everything, if only you kept reading.“
„I wanted to be loveably sad, not irritatingly sad.“
„Our lives, all of our lives, human and animal alike, are formed in relation to others, and in our own abandonment.“
„I wanted to be loveably sad, not irritatingly sad.“
„Our lives, all of our lives, human and animal alike, are formed in relation to others, and in our own abandonment.“
January 26, 2023
I can't remember the last time a book has so thoroughly broken my heart and then so tenderly put it back together again, and done so every single chapter.
This book is a beautifully intimate exploration of love, loss, pain, and connection, through the books that have marked and accompanied us. It is an exercise in grief and remembrance and acceptance and trying to get back. It is full of love for stories and the connections and community they build. It is a book about bunnies.
I have underlined and annotated and written down many quotes and passages from this book. It's a book that gives as much as it takes. And as I was being marked by it, it felt only right to mark it back.
"What do people who feel this bad do? I still don't know. But I try to tell the truth, and when I can't, I tell stories. Try to make it rain butterflies, just for a moment."
Those are the words that end the book. And after lying on the floor for 40 minutes, they still echo in my head.
I've left a piece of myself between these pages, and I won't be able to face to world the same after having read it.
I will try to be hopeful.
I will look for rabbits.
I will tell these stories to myself.
Go read this book. It will hurt and it will mend. And it will be worth every tear and laughter.
This book is a beautifully intimate exploration of love, loss, pain, and connection, through the books that have marked and accompanied us. It is an exercise in grief and remembrance and acceptance and trying to get back. It is full of love for stories and the connections and community they build. It is a book about bunnies.
I have underlined and annotated and written down many quotes and passages from this book. It's a book that gives as much as it takes. And as I was being marked by it, it felt only right to mark it back.
"What do people who feel this bad do? I still don't know. But I try to tell the truth, and when I can't, I tell stories. Try to make it rain butterflies, just for a moment."
Those are the words that end the book. And after lying on the floor for 40 minutes, they still echo in my head.
I've left a piece of myself between these pages, and I won't be able to face to world the same after having read it.
I will try to be hopeful.
I will look for rabbits.
I will tell these stories to myself.
Go read this book. It will hurt and it will mend. And it will be worth every tear and laughter.
January 3, 2023
Like every year, I like to start my reading year with a meaningful book. So for 2023, it was obvious I had to start with 'Reading My Mother Back' by Timothy C. Baker.
I knew I was engaging myself in reading something that went off my usual style since I seldom read memoirs/non-fiction. At most, I read autofiction. Yet this one I was obliged to read, first because Tim is my professor and second because I felt very curious about exploring this genre he talked so often about with passion.
I wasn't—I am not disappointed: 'Reading My Mother Back' is heartbreaking in so many ways that it is impossible for me not to succumb to Tim's writing style. I liked the vulnerability and honesty with which he explores his mother's past or at least the stories she left him as a heritage. I could relate to many of them, not simply to the stories in themselves but also to the themes tackled; his mother's suffering, her relationship with her body, her identity, everything was very interesting from start to finish. The stories which particularly spoke to me were 'The Story of Babar', 'The Magician's Nephew', 'The Secret Garden' and 'The Man Who was Magic'. Some passages were so beautifully written that they left me speechless for some minutes; the one I can remember right now while writing this review is the last few paragraphs of the novel. I don't want to spoil my readers, in case they are curious enough to read this review, but these kinds of parts sparked this little je-ne-sais-quoi in me that I rarely get while reading. Yet this time it happened.
I think it is because Tim encourages his readers, through the stories he mentions and explains, to relate to them and remember those which constitute our own stories. While reading, I never stopped thinking about the animals that inhabited my childhood and that I still think about often today, such as Franklin the Turtle or, as Tim cites, the animals of Narnia. I realise now, after reading this novel, why I connected to these stories and how they "mapped" my world.
'Reading My Mother Back' is, however, not a book I'd recommend to everyone because it has some academic parts I believe would lose the attention of a few readers, especially those who are used to fiction. That being said, these parts were always very informative and clear and helped me to understand Tim's arguments despite not having read the said books. Children's books lovers, you will feel very nostalgic reading this novel, and I'm sure it'll give you a new perspective on those animals your little self adored. It did for me, so much so that I closed the book and was left with so many thoughts that I didn't know where to begin with this review.
I want to re-read this book. The act of re-reading is itself something important that Tim invites us to do. And I will, in the future. I will come back to this book and re-read it, for perhaps it will help me re-read myself, this self that is writing right now, or perhaps someone else. Time will tell...
I knew I was engaging myself in reading something that went off my usual style since I seldom read memoirs/non-fiction. At most, I read autofiction. Yet this one I was obliged to read, first because Tim is my professor and second because I felt very curious about exploring this genre he talked so often about with passion.
I wasn't—I am not disappointed: 'Reading My Mother Back' is heartbreaking in so many ways that it is impossible for me not to succumb to Tim's writing style. I liked the vulnerability and honesty with which he explores his mother's past or at least the stories she left him as a heritage. I could relate to many of them, not simply to the stories in themselves but also to the themes tackled; his mother's suffering, her relationship with her body, her identity, everything was very interesting from start to finish. The stories which particularly spoke to me were 'The Story of Babar', 'The Magician's Nephew', 'The Secret Garden' and 'The Man Who was Magic'. Some passages were so beautifully written that they left me speechless for some minutes; the one I can remember right now while writing this review is the last few paragraphs of the novel. I don't want to spoil my readers, in case they are curious enough to read this review, but these kinds of parts sparked this little je-ne-sais-quoi in me that I rarely get while reading. Yet this time it happened.
I think it is because Tim encourages his readers, through the stories he mentions and explains, to relate to them and remember those which constitute our own stories. While reading, I never stopped thinking about the animals that inhabited my childhood and that I still think about often today, such as Franklin the Turtle or, as Tim cites, the animals of Narnia. I realise now, after reading this novel, why I connected to these stories and how they "mapped" my world.
'Reading My Mother Back' is, however, not a book I'd recommend to everyone because it has some academic parts I believe would lose the attention of a few readers, especially those who are used to fiction. That being said, these parts were always very informative and clear and helped me to understand Tim's arguments despite not having read the said books. Children's books lovers, you will feel very nostalgic reading this novel, and I'm sure it'll give you a new perspective on those animals your little self adored. It did for me, so much so that I closed the book and was left with so many thoughts that I didn't know where to begin with this review.
I want to re-read this book. The act of re-reading is itself something important that Tim invites us to do. And I will, in the future. I will come back to this book and re-read it, for perhaps it will help me re-read myself, this self that is writing right now, or perhaps someone else. Time will tell...
June 12, 2023
I feel a bit weird rating this memoir because I know Timothy C. Baker in person but did not know that I had bought "Reading My Mother Back" before I travelled to Aberdeen for work. The memoir traces one's early love for literature and one's family story as well as how they come together. It was also an elegy for a dearly parted person, a lost mother, but also the loss of one's family history because so many things are and will remain unclear. The memoir is also about growing up in a cult, life, its ups and downs, and how much our family shapes us. It was touching and raw and honest. I found myself to be missing a person I had never met, which is a huge thing to achieve? The memoir was deeply poetic and I thought about it a lot after finishing it.
5 Stars
5 Stars
June 12, 2024
I read this book because it sounded different and I like different. I am not often emotionally overwhelmed by what I read, but I was as near to weeping as I ever get when I got to the end of this book. It is about books and reading and mothers and love and empathy. I came to know Timothy C Baker's mother through the pages of this book and even to love her - empathy is love after all; and I came to know Mr Baker too and to feel something for him. This is a book also about being alone - a cry out to the world. And it called to me and I briefly felt that I was not alone. Go read this book and let it touch you the way it touched me.
March 24, 2025
There are books you hide from for a while because you’re not ready for them to reach through you and speak a language you thought no one else could speak, a language you acquired through different experiences but nevertheless filled with many of the same ruptures and fragments that you thought set you apart in a foreign lonely land where you couldn’t speak. This book is of course worth the many hours of staring at a wall that follow its conclusion, and much more. Experience it and feel it, as other words cannot fully do it justice.
November 25, 2024
I finished this book more than a year ago and am still thinking about it.
It's a lovely meditation on the interweaving of events and stories that shaped the author's life. And it stimulated me to do the same for myself.
He relates difficult, painful circumstances with compassion and humour. A life of reading has obviously given him context and perspective, and specifically, a way to see and understand his mother.
It's a joy to read - and to remember.
It's a lovely meditation on the interweaving of events and stories that shaped the author's life. And it stimulated me to do the same for myself.
He relates difficult, painful circumstances with compassion and humour. A life of reading has obviously given him context and perspective, and specifically, a way to see and understand his mother.
It's a joy to read - and to remember.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews