|
|
|
 Hillary Johnson, Ruth Jones, 1992 "A remarkable account of death by cancer as it affects mother and daughter. What makes the book so gripping is the subletly with which the mother-daughter relationship is described and the drama of their changing and evolving roles. Ruth, the mother, and the daughter, the writer, become in the course of the book remarkable and fully realized characters in their own right, seeming to exist apart from the poignant and predictable course of terminal illness. I read it straight off, and it absorbed me throughout."
--John Bayley, author of Elegy for Iris, and former administrator of the United Kingdom's Booker Prizes
"The title of this variegated narrative hardly does it justice. Though some of the most eloquent passages are about the lingering death of the author's mother, Ruth Jones, from esophageal cancer, it is, just as centrally, the writer's memoir of growing up with the woman she has just seen through her final years of diminishment and loss, and commentary on her mother's art as testimony to her quirky, original, unconstrained, sometimes jaundiced, often hilarious view of the human comedy...
"The theme of forgiveness is only lightly treated, but runs like an undercurrent through the whole memoir as the past is gathered into the present and death reframes a life exuberantly if not always prudently lived. The writer's discomfort with some of her own unpredicatble feelings as she struggles to claim what matters and let the rest go rings true and could be very helpful to any for whom ambivalence is a chiraoscuro surrounding the luminous moments of memory and recognition as a parent dies."
--Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, The Hippocrates Project, New York University School of Medicine
"The book had its inception in the death of Ruth Jones, Hillary's mother (forgive me for using first names, but after spending time with them in this book, I feel as if I know them that way.) But what she celebrates is her mother's life, her spirit, her anima, which Hillary came to know in her mother's final years through her art. 'It was only after Ruth died that I began piecing it all together--my blindness, her artistry, our failure to connect on this signal matter...'
"Edna Ruth Hines Johnson Jones was as complex and complicated a woman as her name. At times, I didn't always like Ruth, the strong-personalitied, outspoken, sometimes coarse, always lively Ruth, but I was always fascinated by her, and by the end of her life and the book I admired and respected her...
"Every daughter has a story to tell about her mother. Hillary Johnson, a journalist and freelance writer, not only has a story but the words to tell it. 'There were a whole lot of little old ladies out there, and then there was Ruth,' she writes...In this work, as in all good writing, the universal is the particular. In the story of Ruth Jones and Hillary Johnson, most of us, I dare say, will see glimpses of our relationships with our own mothers."
--Judith Bromberg, National Catholic Reporter
"Even the closest mother-daughter relationships can unravel and reweave themselves many times over in a lifetime. Johnson's moving tribute to her mother, Ruth Jones, portrays their tenuous struggle, exacerbated by distance and terminal illness. Jones' creativity and openess were evident to all except her journalist daughter, who chose to leave home for school at age 18, never to return until 20 years later, when her mother was dying..Only then did Johnson, herself suffering from a difficult-to-diagnose condition (see Johnson's Osler's Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic), and her mother discover the truth about who each woman really was. Remarried for more than 25 years, Jones had become quite an artist in the intervening years, something Johnson never fully or appreciated until the end. This is a story of a woman finding fulfillment outside of motherhood and a daughter discovering the strength and spirit of the mother she never really knew...Highly recommended for all public libraries."
--Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal
"When her mother Ruth was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the esophagus, Johnson (author Osler's Web and journalist), moved from New York to Minneapolis to be with her, staying until she died four years later. What distinguishes this from other memoirs of caring for a dying parent is Johnson's perceptive rendering of her struggle to reestablish a loving relationship with her charismatic but troubled mother. As a parent, Ruth had been erratic at best, sometimes even destructive to Johnson and her brother. In 1953, when the author was three and her brother six, Ruth abruptly left her husband and took her two children to Paris, placing them on a rustic farm while she joined the literary and artistic circle that included James Baldwin; she also became novelist Frank Yerby's lover. After a year, she and the children returned home; Ruth eventually got a divorce. Although she acknowledges Ruth's flaws (including excessive drinking and smoking), Johnson protrays her in a nonjudgmental manner reminiscent of Mary Karr's depiction of her father in The Liar's Club. When Ruth was 50 and happily married, she enrolled in art school and experienced great joy by creating unusual paintings and drawings, some of which are reproduced in this book. Johnson's writing skill is apparent in both her poignant account of how she witnessed her mother's extreme unhappiness through a child's eyes and in several chilling anecdotes detailing the unnecessary suffering inflicted on her mother by incompetent physicians during the last months of her life. B&W and color illustrations."
--Publishers Weekly
"In 1989, Johnson (Osler's Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic), who was working as a writer in New York City, received devastating news: her mother, Ruth, was dying of esophageal cancer. Johnson immediately moved back to Minneapolis, where she spent the next four years reconnecting with the witty, chain-smoking, hard-drinking woman with whom she shared a relationship that was as tempestuous as any love affair...
"Ruth Jones was no June Cleaver. Trapped in an unahppy marriage to Johnson's father, she attempted suicide (then) ran away from home, supposedly leaving behind a note that read, 'Gone to Paris, took the kids.' Johnson interweaves the story of her mother's past with that of her own rebellion--before she attended journalism school and established herself as a writer of note...[this] anguished chronicle of her mother's final days has a raw power that speaks a simple truth: in the end, for most of us, it is the life, not the art, that matters."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Some memoirs seem written to capitalize on personal suffering. Others seek to impress us with the author's accomplishments and contacts, take us to exotic places we might otherwise never know, or teach us life's hard lessons. Work like this, while sometimes entertaining, fades quickly from a reader's mind.
"A few precious memoirs, however, are written because they must be written. Free of any agenda, they move and remain with us because of their honesty and clarity. They expose flaws and triumphs, revealing truths to the reader at the same time they are discovered by the author...
"Hillary Johnson, a former contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has written a fine example of the memoir as an act of discovery. My Mother Ruth is intimate in the best sense, connecting us with another vulnerable human being rather than brandishing secrets that embarrass us...At a time when memoir follows memoir in an onslaught of self-absorption, the arrival of My Mother Ruth is doubly significant. Not only is this a terrific book, it also reminds us of what the memoir form can offer."
--Floyd Skloot, Sunday Oregonian
"Having read Johnson's earlier book on chronic fatigue syndrome, Osler's Web, I was eager to read her new book. There is an intensity about this one as well...Both of these women risked and risked again to live their own lives...[Johnson] is such an honest writer. Her descriptions of the medical profession are worth the read. I recognize many of them, having taken care of a chronically ill husband. But it is the connection of a mother and daughter that is the power of this telling. It is a must read for mothers and for daughters. Darn well should be required reading for doctors, too!"
--Glenda Martin, Book Women
|
|
|
