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by: Michelle Herman
Amazon.com's Price: $25.00 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780803224261
ISBN: 0803224265
Label: University of Nebraska Press
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 214
Publication Date: March 01, 2005
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Sales Rank: 973000
Studio: University of Nebraska Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
When she was three months old, Michelle Herman's daughter, Grace, went on a hunger strike. At six, she suffered what can only be described, in the old-fashioned way, as a breakdown. And at the ripe old age of eight, she began a study of the nature of 'true romance.' Motherhood may come naturally, but it doesn't necessarily come easily—certainly not as easily as it seemed to this mother when she vowed to do a better job than her own mother had. But the real trouble started when Herman decided that “better” wasn't good enough: she would be the perfect mother. A memoir from the front lines of motherhood by a longtime writer of fiction, The Middle of Everything weaves a daughter's memories of her Brooklyn childhood in the 1950s and 1960s, and the shadow cast on it by her own young mother's paralyzing depression, with a middle-aged woman's account of trying to break her mother's mold by meeting her own child's every need. A story of love of all kinds, of work and friendship (especially best-friendship, its rewards and perils both), of the charms of other people's families, of the miseries and pleasures of aging, and of the twists of the ties that bind each generation to the next, Michelle Herman's book is an energetic, exhaustive, lacerating, unflinching, and often hilarious inside look at the very nature of motherhood.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Required reading for mothers AND daughters
There's so much in this book that should be thought & talked about that I've put it on my book group's list for this winter--we're a bunch of new or new-ish mothers and usually we DON'T read motherhood books or parenting books because the point of our reading group is to take a BREAK from thinking about being moms. But this book raises so many important issues, I think we have to break our own "rule." And it doesn't JUST talk about parenting issues, either. It also talks about what it means to ... Read More
Rating: - Real motherhood, Real honesty
Not since Anne Lamott's "Operating Instructions" have I felt so...connected to a fellow mother - and the mother part doesn't even really get rolling till the final part of the book!
I loved reading about Michelle's process of 'getting there'... all the relationships we form, for better or for worse; the friends we make and lose; the loneliness and love... all that stuff we go through as women before we enter the most challenging relationship of all - that we have with our children. Thank you ... Read More
Rating:  - In Whose Best Interest?
I almost had a nervous breakdown just reading this book. Herman's writing for three quarters of the book is about herself and "restless" does not begin to describe the way she analyzes relationships. It's tedious and self-indulgent. The most interesting parts of the book is when she describes her daughter and the "breakdown". I will give her credit for being brutally honest about herself. As a mother, the most interesting thing said in the book is the criteria the doctor recommended when deciding ... Read More
Rating: - Something new and completely different...
I just read this book and I feel like I have to point out that (for me, anyway) what was great about it WASN'T the whole mother-daughter thing that the publisher and the reviews I've read concentrate on. There's stuff in this book about friendship, about BEST FRIENDS, that I've never read anywhere else. No one talks about this! I felt this jolt, like, FINALLY! My best friends have been my mainstay since I was little (and I'm 38 now!). I love my husband, I love my son, but it's my best friend Joanna and ... Read More
Rating: - my daughter, my self
Extraordinary, highly recommended, poignant, powerful, entertaining, insightful, playful and profound. May provoke laughter and tears. An amazing frank, disarming and charming collection of essays on daughterhood, motherhood, adolescence, the artist as a middle-aged mother, romance, puppy love, the Beatles, need and want, and on the joys and sorrows, successes and failures, fears and hopes, pleasures and pains of being a mother, a daughter, and a hopelessly idealistic and romantic seeker of perfect love, ... Read More
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