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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
A Mother's Tale
In 1984, Phillip Lopate sat down with his mother, Frances, to listen to her life story. A strong, resilient, indomitable woman who lived through the major events of the 20th century, she was orphaned in childhood, ran away and married young, then reinvented herself as a mother, war factory worker, candy store owner, community organizer, clerk, actress and singer. But paired with exciting anecdotes are the criticisms of the husband who couldn't satisfy her, the details of numerous affairs and sexual encounters, and though she succeeded at many of her roles, Fran always felt mistreated, taken advantage of. After the interviews, at a loss for what to do with the tapes, Lopate put them away. But thirty years after, after his mother had passed away, Lopate found himself drawn back to the recordings of this conversation, and thus begins a three-way conversation between a mother, his younger self, and the person he is today. Trying to break open the family myths, rationalizations, and self-deceptions, A Mother's Tale is about family members who love each other but who can't seem to overcome their mutual mistrust. Though Phillip is sympathizing to a point, he cannot join her in her operatic displays of self-pity and her blaming his father for everything that went wrong. His detached, ironic character has been formed partly in response to her melodramatic one. The climax is an argument in which he tries to persuade her, using logic, of all things, that he really does love her, and is only partially successful, of course. A Mother's Tale is about something primal and universal: the relationship between a mother and her child, the parent disappointed with the payback, the child, now fully grown, judgmental. The humor is in the details.
Book Details
- Publisher: Mad River Books
- Publish Date: Jan 15th, 2017
- Pages: 200
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 9.30in - 6.20in - 0.70in - 0.93lb
- EAN: 9780814213315
- Categories: • Memoirs• Women's Studies
About the Author
Lopate, Phillip: - Phillip Lopate is a central figure in the resurgence of the American essay, both through his best-selling anthology The Art of the Personal Essay and his collections Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, Portrait Inside My Head, and To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction. He directs the nonfiction MFA program at Columbia University, where he is Professor of Writing.
Praise for this book
"A Mother's Tale shines with pain and laughter. . . . Lopate's book is an antisentimental tour de force."--Benjamin Taylor, author of Proust: The Search
"With his signature insight and candor, Lopate reveals his mother for the complicated and troubled character she was, and himself--her darling, her confessor, her victim, her judge--as the child behind the writer he was to become. I could not put it down." --Lynn Freed, author of Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home: Life on the Page
"According to John Hawkes, 'There is only one subject: failure.' Phillip Lopate's brilliant new triangle of a book explores and embodies this truth with shattering directness. 'I was put on earth to understand my mother's pain and have not gotten very far in the process, ' Lopate writes. Ah, but he has." --David Shields
"This latest book from one of America's finest essayists is touching and tender, fascinating and funny--and true in the complex ways that we associate with the best fiction." --Geoff Dyer, author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition
"I relished this book. From its clash between mother and son emerges a fortifying love, which (I guess like all parental love) has its casualties along with its lush victories." --Richard Ford
"The gravitational pull of the child toward the mother is so powerful that it persists even in the face of cruelty or neglect. What is finally most affecting about this book is not Frances's story but her son's pained efforts to confront it." --Ruth Franklin, The New York Review of Books
"[A] fascinating and deftly constructed book." --Jerald Walker, The New York Times Book Review
"Lucky for us, the cassettes collected dust in a shoebox in the closet until he was ready to write this entertaining and moving book, which is equal parts reflection, reconstruction, police interrogation, psychiatric evaluation, and, ultimately, tribute to his mother." --Annabelle Gurwitch, Los Angeles Review of Books
"By offering readers a candid portrait of his mother, Lopate manages precisely what he must: he takes a personal story and turns it outward, and in doing so, he makes it our story, too." --B. J. Hollar, The Los Angeles Review
"Lopate, who's made a life out of language, listens back to the woman who first taught him to speak." --Hayden Bennett, San Francisco Chronicle
"A Mother's Tale is a nonfiction book that gives Frances a lot of time in the spotlight. . . . Lopate's mother was a 'monologist' who understood the power of narrative, and a person who could captivate and frustrate any audience who was willing to listen to her." --Michele Filgate, Barnes & Noble Review
"A Mother's Tale shines with pain and laughter. . . . Lopate's book is an antisentimental tour de force."--Benjamin Taylor, author of Proust: The Search