The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters
is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an
exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working
through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions.
Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to
move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoë, Katie's teenage
daughter. Katie and Zoë had become a mother-daughter team, strong
enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a seventy-seven-year-old
woman set in her ways.
Filled with fairy-tale hope that she and her mother would become
friends, and that Helen would grow close to her exceptional
granddaughter, Katie embarked on an experiment in intergenerational
living that she would soon discover was filled with land mines: memories
of her parents' painful divorce, of her mother's drinking, of
dislocating moves back and forth across the country, and of Katie's own
widowhood and bumpy recovery. Helen, for her part, was also holding
difficult issues at bay.
How these three women from such different generations learn to navigate
their challenging, turbulent, and ultimately healing journey together
makes for riveting reading. By turns heartbreaking and funny--and always
insightful--Katie Hafner's brave and loving book answers questions about
the universal truths of family that are central to the lives of so many.
Praise for Mother Daughter Me
"The most raw, honest and engaging memoir I've read in a long
time."--KJ Dell'Antonia, The New York Times
"A brilliant, funny, poignant, and wrenching story of three generations
under one roof, unlike anything I have ever read."--Abraham Verghese,
author of Cutting for Stone
"Weaving past with present, anecdote with analysis, [Katie] Hafner's
riveting account of multigenerational living and mother-daughter
frictions, of love and forgiveness, is devoid of self-pity and unafraid
of self-blame. . . . [Hafner is] a bright--and
appealing--heroine."--Cathi Hanauer, Elle
"[A] frank and searching account . . . Currents of grief, guilt,
longing and forgiveness flow through the compelling
narrative."**--Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle
"A touching saga that shines . . . We see how years-old unresolved
emotions manifest."--Lindsay Deutsch, USA Today
"[Hafner's] memoir shines a light on nurturing deficits repeated
through generations and will lead many readers to relive their own
struggles with forgiveness."--Erica Jong, People
"An unusually graceful story, one that balances honesty and tact . . .
Hafner narrates the events so adeptly that they feel
enlightening."--Harper's
"Heartbreakingly honest, yet not without hope and flashes of wry
humor."--Kirkus Reviews
"[An] emotionally raw memoir examining the delicate, inevitable shift
from dependence to independence and back again."--O: The Oprah
Magazine (Ten Titles to Pick Up Now)
