Bit over the idea that women over 60 need to have someone else make their decisions for them, particularly after the death of their controlling spouse. Strout’s unflinching eye and staggering prose reveal the complex longings of these two vulnerable women. Set in San Francisco, Ruth has a fraught relationship with her mother, LuLing, who suffers from dementia. Naomi doesn’t know how to tell her daughters about Ellis, especially Martha, she was very close to her father and she won’t be happy. She is Associate Professor and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of North Texas.

The best book I’ve ever read on the internal struggles of a daughter to break away from the mother, and why it is so important to persevere. After a falling out with her mother, Vivi, theater director Siddalee is sent a scrapbook that tells the story of Vivi’s upbringing in Louisiana, where she and her girlfriends, nicknamed the Ya-Yas, experienced joy and laughter alongside trauma and heartbreak. But when Kate receives an anonymous text insisting Amelia didn’t jump, she sets out to find the truth to vindicate her daughter’s memory. Attests to the explosion of women's writing across Western Europe and to the centrality of the mother-daughter plot .

In that book, Knausgaard clears out his father’s house after the man effectively kills himself with drink, hauling away an unimaginably putrid mess. A mother is at the center of the story — and her family — in this magical novel, also available in audiobook. With descriptive prose, captivating characters and more than one intriguing secret hidden deep in Naomi’s past, Mothers and Daughters is a heartwarming and very satisfying read, that may well make you reflect on your own family relationships. When Brodeur’s own daughter turns fourteen, she realizes, “[T]here is something noxious in our matrilineal line. Ms James doesn’t use stereotypes, there are no wicked people or femme fatales which is so refreshing.

Prematurity, for example, is devastating to the mother even if the baby is only born a few weeks early and I doubt very much she would be over it that quickly. When I finished the memoir, I told Indie about it during one of our Zoom visits, explaining how it reminded me of us, especially the ending. Paula sets out to find her mother and discover the truth about her family and past in this novel (and audiobook) driven by both mysteries and Paula’s own emotional journey. Tracing the journey of families both found and forged, this is a book — and audiobook — that will stay with you.But McCracken and Tillman have done their best with what their mothers left behind, and, as psychologists sometimes say of mothering they approve of, that’s good enough.