Re: JCO: Missing Mom

Hi Eric,

I have now read Joan Didion's book that you recommended as a study of grief but, unfortunately, I was disappointed. It did not bring what I was hoping for (what exactly it was I don't know but something like Missing Mom) and it did not deliver what you described in your letter. I am sure it's a reflection on me and not on the book itself but since literature is a subjective field I thought I would share my comments with you.

I found her memoir a cold book, as if afraid of emotion, nearly clinical and spoken from the mind and not the heart. It was very distant, more like a "literary" textbook on grief than a personal account of one's loss. I could not relate to it although grief has been very much part of my life. There was no magic in it.

There was very little passion in it. Honesty, yes, perhaps but only guarded - as if the author herself did not want to acknowledge what she felt. She was behaving in a certain way and she was thinking in a certain way - but what did she feel? She felt responsible for not being able to save her husband from death, she missed him a lot, she analysed a lot, she tried to think, to know. Perhaps it was too painful to let herself feel but as a result the book lacks passion, emotion and empathy with those who may experience grief differently. I found it cold, intellectual and in a sense calculated.

Clearly, it did not appeal to me. Sorry!

Cheers,

Marie

----- Original Message -----

From: Eric Anderson

To: jco@usfca.edu

Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 3:16 PM

Subject: RE: JCO: Missing Mom

Hello Marie
 
I agree that Missing Mom is a very moving novel for the reasons you described.
 
Another book I read recently which deals so powerfully with the subject of grief is Joan Didion's memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. It demonstrates how emotional response can't be regulated by rational thinking, how the physical presence of those we've lost can take up habitation in our minds and the way we live our daily lives. It's a beautiful form of tribute despite how painful a process it is. You may be interested in reading Oates' novel American Appetites if you haven't already which partly deals with grief and loss concerning a relationship between a husband and wife which was much more tumultuous than that which Nikki had with her mother. However, the daughter's way of mourning is similar in some ways to that of Missing Mom.
 
Eric

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From: rejment@bredband.net
To: jco@usfca.edu
Subject: JCO: Missing Mom
Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 10:59:40 +0200

I've just finished reading "Missing Mom". I was truly moved by it maybe because I have recently experienced the death of my sister, with whom we were very close, and I could relate to Nikki's feelings so well. Nikki tried to impersonate her mother and I tried to impersonate my sister – like Nikki I have tried to become a new me.

The subject of death of the loved ones and our coping mechanisms to survive without them is quite painful to those who have been through it but maybe quite abstract to those who have not.

Has anybody read a good novel that handles the topic as sensitively as JCO?

Cheers,

Marie

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