Book Review by Robert L. Seltzer
“MY MOTHER and me” by Thomas Hauser
“MY MOTHER and me” is a type of books that may stick with you lengthy after you’ve completed studying it.
The guide has a slender focus — the connection between a son and his mom. But there’s nothing slender or parochial within the method. Like all gifted writers, Thomas Hauser captures the common by portraying the particular.
A slender guide — solely 140 pages — the memoir isn’t any much less substantial for its brevity. The writing is evident and lucid with mild flights of poetry that replicate the feelings that motivated the son to write down about his mom. She was a outstanding girl — sturdy, clever and fiercely dedicated to these much less lucky than her.
For all her sterling attributes, nonetheless, we might by no means have gotten to fulfill Eleanor Nordlinger Hauser — “Ellie,” to her pals — and not using a son who thought-about her life price documenting. He was proper, though this guide isn’t any hagiography. The writer presents a full portrait of his mom, flaws and all, and she emerges all of the extra admirable for the sincere depiction.
The guide represents the best partnership between story and story teller as a result of, for all her sterling qualities, it took a superb author to color a whole and vivid portrait of her. That the “brilliant writer” turned out to be her son provides an virtually heartbreaking poignancy to “MY MOTHER and me.”
In sentence after sentence, web page after web page, you learn prose that embodies the one biggest trait a author can possess. The prose compels you to maintain studying, however you don’t simply learn the phrases; you hear them, their rhythm and cadence guiding you from passage to passage. The cliché rings true with “MY MOTHER and Me” — you won’t be able to place it down.
Robert L. Seltzer is a former recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Career Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the writer of two books – “Amado Muro and Me” and “Thursday Night at the Mall”.
