Friday, May 15, 2015

Review: The Year My Mother Came Back


The Year My Mother Came Back
by Alice Eve Cohen

Synopsis

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.

Review

This book is a touching read about Alice's mother reappearing to Alice many years after her death. She reappears during a time in which Alice needs someone the most. Although there is a tough relationship between them, through the revisitation, Alice is able to understand and accept what it is to be a mother. 

Although I am not a mother, this book resonated with me as a daughter. It is difficult to think about someone coming back after having gone through the pain of losing them. Alice very eloquently tells us about her experience in this well-rounded, and interesting story. 

Verdict

This story is for everyone, but especially for those who have or wish they had a closer relationship with their mother. 

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