37 years old, just broken up with his girlfriend, unemployed and vaguely depressed, Hermann has problems of his own. Now, his mother, who is rambunctious, rapier-tongued, frequently drunk and, until now impervious to change, has cancer. The doctor's prognosis sounds pretty final, but after some online research, Hermann decides to accompany his mother to an unconventional treatment centre in the Netherlands. Mother and son set out on their trip to Amsterdam, embarking on a schnapps and pint fuelled picaresque that is by turns wickedly funny, tragic and profound.
"Anguished, beautifully written... The Long Goodbye is an elegiac depiction of drama as old as life." -- The New York Times Book Review From one of America's foremost young literary voices, a transcendent portrait of the unbearable anguish of grief and the enduring power of familial love. What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief-its monumental agony and microscopic intimacies-an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond. O'Rourke's story is one of a life gone off the rails, of how watching her mother's illness-and separating from her husband-left her fundamentally altered. But it is also one of resilience, as she observes her family persevere even in the face of immeasurable loss. With lyricism and unswerving candor, The Long Goodbye conveys the fleeting moments of joy that make up a life, and the way memory can lead us out of the jagged darkness of loss. Effortlessly blending research and reflection, the personal and the universal, it is not only an exceptional memoir, but a necessary one.
Stop Seeking Happiness; Just Get Out of Its Way! Happiness is our natural state, for each of us and for humanity as a whole, argues John Izzo. But that happiness is being stolen by insidious mental patterns that he depicts as thieves: the thief of control, the thief of conceit, the thief of coveting, the thief of consumption, and the thief of comfort. He discovered these thieves as he sought the true source of happiness during a year-long sabbatical, walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain and living in the Andes of Peru. This thoughtful and inspiring book describes the disguises these thieves wear, the tools they use to break into our hearts, and how to lock them out once and for all. Izzo shows how these same thieves of personal happiness are destroying society as well. This book will help us all discover, develop, and defend the happiness that is our true nature while creating a world we all want to live in.
This tender and moving memoir by the great Yiddish writer Chaim Grade takes us to the very source of his widely praised novels and poems—the city of Vilna, the "Jerusalem of Lithuania," during the years before World War II. Centered on the figure of Grade's mother, Vella—simple, pious, hard-working—this is a richly detailed account of the ghetto of his youth, of the lives of the rabbis, the wives, the tradesmen, the peddlers, and the scholars. We see Vella, desperate after losing her husband, become a fruit-peddler, struggling to survive poverty and to remain true to her faith in the face of human pettiness and cruelty. We follow Grade as he walks in the footsteps of his scholar father, a champion of enlightenment; we see him entering marriage, and his mother finding some peace of mind in a marriage of her own—all of this in a world recalled with extraordinary physical and emotional intensity. Then, World War II. The partition of Poland between the Soviet Union and Germany is followed by the new German invasion of June 1941. Grade—believing, as do so many others, that the Nazis pose a danger chiefly to able-bodied men like himself—flees into Russia. In his travels on foot and by train he meets a fascinating, kaleidoscopic array of characters: the disillusioned Communist Lev Kogan; the durachok, or simpleton, a young prisoner who, mistaken for a German spy, is shot when he jumps from a train; the once-prosperous lawyer, Orenstein, who virtually becomes a beggar, dies and is buried by strangers in a remote Central Asian village. With the war's end, Grade returns to Vilna—to find the ghetto in ruins, to learn that his wife and his mother have gone to their deaths—and he is left with nothing but memories. But it is here, amid the devastation of a people, that he finds the compulsion and the passion to commit to paper the world that has been lost.
Shortly after Albert Cohen left France for London to escape the Nazis, he received news of his mother’s death in Marseille. Unable to mourn her, he expressed his grief in a series of moving pieces for La France libre, which later grew into Book of My Mother. Achingly honest, intimate, and moving, this love song is a tribute to all mothers. Cohen himself expressed, "I shall not have written in vain if one of you, after reading my hymn of death, is one evening gentler with his mother because of me and my mother."
A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Riveting and unconventional, The Last Story of Mina Lee traces the far-reaching consequences of secrets in the lives of a Korean immigrant mother and her daughter Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot can’t understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. Determined to discover the truth, Margot unravels her single mother’s past as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother, Mina. Thirty years earlier, Mina Lee steps off a plane to take a chance on a new life in America. Stacking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing she expects is to fall in love. But that moment leads to repercussions for Mina that echo through the decades, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death. Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee is a powerful and exquisitely woven debut novel that explores identity, family, secrets, and what it truly means to belong. HIGHLY ANTICIPATED BY FORTUNE · POPSUGAR · PUREWOW · BETCHES · GMA.COM · VULTURE · BUSTLE · THE MILLIONS · LITHUB · BOOKRIOT · BOOKISH “Painful, joyous... A story that cries out to be told.” —Los Angeles Times “Kim is a brilliant new voice in American fiction.” —Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel “Suspenseful and deeply felt.” —Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists
“What brought you the greatest joy? What do you wish you had learned sooner? What ultimately mattered and what didn't?” asks Dr. John Izzo. Based on a highly acclaimed public television series, this book takes the reader on a heartwarming and profound journey to find lasting happiness. Imagine for a moment that you are about to take a foreign vacation to an exotic destination. You have saved your entire life to travel there. It is a destination with almost unlimited choices of how to spend your time and you know you will not have enough time to explore every opportunity. You are fairly certain that you will never get to take a second trip to this destination; this will be your one opportunity. Now imagine that someone informs you that there are several people in your neighborhood who have been to that country, explored every corner. Some of them enjoyed the journey and have few regrets, but others wish they could take the trip again knowing what they know now. Would you not invite them over for dinner, ask them to bring their photographs, listen to their stories, and hear their advice? This is precisely the journey explored in this book. Dr. John Izzo and his colleagues interviewed over 200 people, ages 60-106, who were identified by friends and acquaintances as “the one person they knew who had found happiness and meaning.” From town barbers to Holocaust survivors, from aboriginal chiefs to CEOs, these people had over 18,000 years of life experience between them. He asked them questions like, “What brought you the greatest joy? What do you wish you had learned sooner? What ultimately mattered and what didn't?” Here Izzo shares their stories—funny, moving, and thought-provoking—and the Five Secrets he learned from listening to them. This book will make you laugh, bring you to tears, and inspire you to discover what matters long before you die.
A memoir by American former actress and singer Jennette McCurdy about her career as a child actress and her difficult relationship with her abusive mother who died in 2013
