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Fierce Attachments: A Memoir

by Vivian Gornick, Jonathan Lethem (Introduction)

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 390 ratings · 62 reviews

In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. There have been numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the prinicpal crux of female...more

Paperback, 216 pages

Published September 14th 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1987)

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Jul 17, 2012 Jane Hoppe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick

Before reading Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments, I felt frustrated by frozen memories. Why can’t I remember conversations, let alone themes, from my childhood and teen years? Why can I not paint a picture of anyone, myself included? Why does no one appear whole? After reading Gornick’s memoir, I sense a thawing. Memories aren’t exactly gushing yet, but they’re trickling.

Gornick weaves anecdotes to show primarily influences of her mother and a neighbor, Nett...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Joslyn rated it 3 of 5 stars

There is a young woman who has the desire to find independence from her widowed mother who dominates the house hold. Throughout her childhood and as she makes her transition into adulthood there is this constant battle for control over her life. In a rather up front manner, Vivian Gornick reveals some of her life story through the writing of her memoir Fierce Attachments. She shines some light on the inner struggle all young women go through to be their own individual despite the control their...more There is a young woman who has the desire to find independence from her widowed mother who dominates the house hold. Throughout her childhood and as she makes her transition into adulthood there is this constant battle for control over her life. In a rather up front manner, Vivian Gornick reveals some of her life story through the writing of her memoir Fierce Attachments. She shines some light on the inner struggle all young women go through to be their own individual despite the control their mothers try to have in the lives of their children. The troubles Vivian endures and openly expresses in her memoir are not limited to the conflicts she has with her mother. Vivian Gornick provides the readers of her memoir with the images of a girl who struggles to become her own woman while dealing with the lack of acceptance from her mother and other women in her life.
An upfront expression of Vivian’s life is written in a very dramatic and descriptive depiction of her experiences and her memoir is structured in a constant stream of words without the use of chapters as dividers. Throughout this brilliantly constructed memoir you are confronted with the love-hate relationship Vivian Gornick shares with her mother. This memoir ranges from when she is a young girl in the 1950’s living in an old New York apartment with her Jewish family to the 1980’s when Vivian is a successful woman who still maintains a relationship with her mother, although the story was not written completely linear. In a way, it is almost like there is an almost feminist view in the memoir because Vivian focuses not only on her relationship with her mother but also with other women in her life without giving much attention to the men while writing about her life. Fierce Attachments is about the struggle for a woman’s identity independent from her mother or anyone else. The memoir shows Vivian’s attempt to resolve physical and internal aspects life which are difficult to handle but cannot avoid. She does not fill the pages with tedious details but writes in a way which allows the readers to fill in the blanks with their own imagery, thus making the memoir more relatable to the people who are reading the book. Vivian reaches into her life and blatantly describes her experiences in a way where the readers know what she is talking about while also cleverly omitting details in order for the readers to fit their own lives in the spaces she leaves.
Vivian Gornick manages to compile her experiences and the inner workings of the relationship she shared with her mother is brilliant. She is able to write in a way which is relatable and may even get the reader to think that she is describing the reader’s own mother-daughter relationship. The author creates images of a girl who struggles to become her own woman while also trying to find acceptance from the women in her life. Vivian Gornick is refreshingly honest and her memoir invites her readers into her world while managing to create an atmosphere where the readers can fill in the spaces in the book with their own story.
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Feb 16, 2011 Janelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Vivian Gornick
Fierce Attachments,Simon and Schuster publishing, New York, 1987

If you happen to have a love/ hate relationship with your mother, this book may have you thinking you wrote it yourself. The mother-daughter relationship described throughout this memoir takes a journey through time tested by everyday life and love. The author portrays her mother so well you feel as if you have to of known someone just like her. She is animated, fiery, passionate, opinionated, and a strong willed wo...more Vivian Gornick
Fierce Attachments,Simon and Schuster publishing, New York, 1987

If you happen to have a love/ hate relationship with your mother, this book may have you thinking you wrote it yourself. The mother-daughter relationship described throughout this memoir takes a journey through time tested by everyday life and love. The author portrays her mother so well you feel as if you have to of known someone just like her. She is animated, fiery, passionate, opinionated, and a strong willed woman. The memoir describes the mother and daughter’s life together by jumping back and forth from the present to past. Woven together gracefully, each detailed emotionally ridden story from the past is laced through the author’s present life by way of daily encounters with her mother. You can clearly see, and the author is not hestitant to admit, that her mother’s own qualities which she has observed, admired, and even hated her whole life are deeply rooted within herself. The struggle between the grown daughter finding her own identity and separating from her mother’s is illustrated throughout the entire memoir. The story ranges from the time period when the young daughter was living with her Jewish family in an old apartment in the ‘50’s all the way to her living a successful life in the 80’s all the while still maintaining a close relationship with her mother, whether they both liked it or not. I really admired the way the story was crafted in the sense that the timeline was not completely linear yet the reader still gets a clear and concise understanding at where the story stands. It gave the author a chance to show how her relationship with her mother developed (and sometimes unraveled) while illustrating how it pertains to their present life. There is a feminist underlying tone throughout the memoir while the author focuses on the feelings and experiences of the woman around her while not so much the men. The author is most definitely leading an independent life as a woman because of her mother’s values and beliefs. The way the author successfully compiled the memoir really made this book a great read that never left you feeling like it was going now where. True love, devotion and detest that comes with a mother and daughter relationship is apparent throughout the entire text. Of course they were not perfect but that is in fact what makes them perfect. The way they snip at one another, ride each other’s nerves and yet always find time to spend together is what makes the relationship so honest and true. (less)

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Jan 02, 2009 Katherine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Gornick’s memoir, Fierce Attachments, explores the complicated and painful life experiences that she had as a child growing up with her widowed mother. Gornick’s life was a difficult one, filled with competition from her mother, lack of acceptance, and a general sense of ostracism from the women who surrounded her. Gornick’s mother, a judgmental and hardworking woman, tried her best to provide for her children; however, her rigidity towards her daughter’s individuality never appeared to be acce...more

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Sep 13, 2010 Caitlin Constantine rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've seen this book cited as a classic of the memoir genre, and as I have recently undertaken the task of schooling myself in the classics, I figured I needed to read this. I'm glad I did. It's not because the story is particularly remarkable, because it's not - at least, not any more than the story of a working-class immigrant Jewish family in 1940s New York City can be - but because the way Gornick handles the story is practically virtuoso. She brings you into the claustrophobic setting of the...more

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Jul 06, 2010 Davita Westbrook rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had the opportunity to study with Vivian this summer and I have to say, she's a brilliant writer and more importantly, a brilliant THINKER. Fierce Attachments is a great effort for how it pushes form, weaving back and forth between walks with her mother through NYC, and the life they shared in the Bronx with a colorful cast of characters during Vivian's childhood. I most enjoyed the voice of her mother, which is so authentic and deliberate and faithfully rendered, that is practically leaps off...more

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Feb 17, 2009 Gloria Johns rated it 5 of 5 stars

Vivian Gornick's memoir takes us thru her experience with not only her mom but the other women who have crossed her life and how these women have impacted her life. It is Vivian's story but we see ourselves mirrored thru her experience because as women we have all been effected by our collective consciousness. As she struggles with the issues of her mom we cannot help but recollect our own personal struggles with our own mom. As we watch her struggle there is recognition of the struggle within u...more

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Apr 10, 2010 Sonja rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a rather interesting memoir written by a Jewish woman, Vivian Gornick. Her father died when she was young and her mother assumed the victim role for the rest of her life, altho she did go out and get a job to support her two children. The author had trouble establishing relationships with men. She married once and divorced after 6 years or so. Then she slept with an old acquaintance for about 6 months and later on had an on-going relationship with a married man for 6 years. She and her...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Tabitha Blankenbiller rated it 3 of 5 stars

The more I read other people’s work and critique my own, the more I am seeing that I need to trust my potential readers more. I don’t want to be an overblown author like Tolkein, taking twenty pages to describe a tree. For one thing I’ve never been able to get through a single one of his books. And in addition, such stilted description is all the more unnecessary in nonfiction writing. You’re writing about real life. The audience has likely seen and felt the same things that you’re describing. I...more The more I read other people’s work and critique my own, the more I am seeing that I need to trust my potential readers more. I don’t want to be an overblown author like Tolkein, taking twenty pages to describe a tree. For one thing I’ve never been able to get through a single one of his books. And in addition, such stilted description is all the more unnecessary in nonfiction writing. You’re writing about real life. The audience has likely seen and felt the same things that you’re describing. I think that Vivian Gornick is someone who embraced this truth and made brevity and strategic omission hallmarks of her writing.
In Fierce Attachments, the details are not omnipresent. They are sparing and when they come along, they matter. One of the pivotal, most memorable scenes (where the narrator discovers Nettie having sex with a priest while her 5-year-old son watches, restrained, in a chair), the moment lingers in your mind more from your imagination than from the author actually divulges. The entire scene stretches less than a page. She sets the mood and visual by simply stating: “The kitchen is seeped in a kind of violent gloom, soft, full, intense. The room is empty: bathed in the lovely half-light, but empty” (Gornick 91). The first sentence runs out in whispered staccatos: soft, full, intense. We can almost see her eyes darting around this desolate kitchen from the stove to the window to the table and chairs, searching for her friend, not sure of what she (or we) really wish to find here. The second sentence foreshadows that there is something indeed here, just not bathed in the dim light. The something lurks in the shadows, both the actual darkness that the writer gives us a fleeting glimpse into (a breast, a movement “like a cat”, the observed son) and the ominous darkness our imagination begins hinting at. What dark deeds are truly transpiring here? What is to be witnessed? What is to be imagined? Gornick does not pull punches or play tricks, but she does allow us to play tricks on ourselves.
She uses the same technique to a similar maddening effect later, after a falling-out between Nettie and the narrator’s mother. While she is coming home from school, the formerly-beloved neighbor peeks her head out and pleads with her to come in. Gornick briefly describes her inner turmoil, turning up the tension on what could easily be glossed over as an innocuous plea. Instead she builds up the agony between her loyalties, and when she finally makes the decision to cross the threshold, we are left to our imagination and white space. What was said? Was something done? Again, our mind starts running with the possibilities. This technique is not overused, which would lead readers to get annoyed with the constant cliffhangers. Just a few memorable places, like in these two instances, that keep us hungry to continue on. Fierce Attachments is not so much about a verbatim lifetime than it is about the struggle for identity and the reconciliation to those physical and internal facets of our lives that we cannot escape. These struggles are universal, so the author does not need to create a universe from scratch. She gives us enough detail to envision hers, but allows us to fill in the “empty spaces in lovely light” with our own experiences and visions. By using this technique, she closes the narrative distance between her voice and the reader to make the experience more personal.
I admire Gornick’s faith in her readers, which is supported by the strength of her thoughtfully-crafted writing. I intend to use it as an example of putting the weight in proper places and not throwing in detail for detail’s sake.
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Oct 18, 2012 K M rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one one of those books that really grew on me with each page. By the time I finished reading, I loved it. The author, Vivian Gornick, explores her "attachments" to various people throughout her life, with a recurring focus on her mother. Gornick comes up with some tremendously beautiful and insightful sentences and passages. I love how she describes the current status of her psychological relationship with her mother:

"A degree of distance has been permanently achieved. I glimpse the joy...more

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Nov 23, 2012 Camille Cusumano rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

I’m a fierce admirer of Vivian Gornick’s writing. Her prose is shapely and radiant, to use her own words. Yet the labor that must go into that art is completely offstage. I find the meticulously clean space around each and every word on the pages of her books resounds with meaning, all of which the author skillfully, deliberately chooses to leave unsaid but not inaccessible. This modus operandi alone makes her a writer’s writer. Such use of understatement does not a mainstream readership capture...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Deja rated it 4 of 5 stars

A memoir about Gornick's relationship with her mother. A good memoir. Haunting, well-developed characters. And she seems to capture well the intensity and complexity of their relationship. I liked the form, too: current stories of walking the streets of New York with her mother as an adult weaved with stories from her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. It's a book about her mother, yes, but it's also a book about NYC, the nature of grief and love, and how it feels to begin to make sens...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Zenmoon rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: All those drawn to superb memoir

Recommended to Zenmoon by: By way of University study

Shelves: best-memoir-reads, creative-nonfiction, total-favourites

Vivien Gornick is a memoirist of dazzling skill. She is among those wonderful writers who, in writing about her own life, cause you to connect with the kaleidoscopic emotions of your own. She is what all good publishers of memoir are aching to find, the kind of writer I wish I source more of. Written before the memoir boom, this book is a seminal example of the genre, a book that readers of all persuasions will adore, and students of life writing will be personally and academically enriched by r...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Hannah Messler rated it 5 of 5 stars

Oh god, I want to write this book now--this book in its version of my mother, that is. I can't imagine that not being the response of anyone who'd read this--I want everyone with a mother to read this, and then see how it makes you want to write it, too. The mother-daughter relationship is just completely endlessly fascinating, it's got all the little kinks and knots and blind spots packed into it in such twisted, heartstopping, gasp-inducing, indignant tender grateful shocks . . . my sister and...more

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Feb 25, 2008 Keleigh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: schooldaze

Any writing carries the personal thumbprint of its author; but none more forthrightly and self-consciously than the memoir. From the first pages of Gornick’s work, I was aware that I was being sucked into one person’s filtered perspective of reality, and I gladly surrendered based on an immediate sense of trust. This trust was borne, I think, of her no-holds-barred, but nonetheless discerning tone. There was no shock value in her narrative. Rather, she holds a concentrated and rhythmic conversat...more Any writing carries the personal thumbprint of its author; but none more forthrightly and self-consciously than the memoir. From the first pages of Gornick’s work, I was aware that I was being sucked into one person’s filtered perspective of reality, and I gladly surrendered based on an immediate sense of trust. This trust was borne, I think, of her no-holds-barred, but nonetheless discerning tone. There was no shock value in her narrative. Rather, she holds a concentrated and rhythmic conversation with the reader, lifting the curtain on her own consciousness as high, it seems, as she is able. I got the sense that Gornick’s particular M.O. for dealing with feelings is to process them intellectually. When that rectangular space inside her “expands gloriously” (103), she is safe and free–no one can touch her–because she’s “thinking.” Not feeling. Yet this ability to detach is also what drives her memoir so beautifully and convincingly toward wholeness. As she puts it, “Out of such moments of detachment comes the narrative tale we tell of our lives” (60). By positioning herself in a present-tense narrative looking back, she is able to hold up an incandescent mirror of the soul’s truth; a faithful rendering of the story that, as she can see from her creative distance, is as alive in its storyness as it is in the flesh. Perhaps more so, since retrospectively she can allow herself to feel the feelings she conditioned herself, as a matter of survival, to suppress in the moment of experience. This writerly detachment is what can produce such straightforward and self-aware confessions as “I must have been excited. Certainly I was repelled” (78), in the section about sleeping with her mother after her father’s death.

Gornick finds intellectual conversation “immensely erotic” (106), and this is abundantly clear in the shape and rhythm of her sentences. She builds a palpable momentum in scenes like the dinner reminiscing with Dorothy Levinson (80-86), which rises to a tension-buzzing crescendo, and the descriptions of bike-riding with Marilyn (94) on free-wheeling spring days. I personally loved every scene with Nettie, a character she captured so well in her sensuality and eroticized rage that I found myself catching my breath every time her name was mentioned.

The true crux of the story, for me, was Gornick’s realization, however cliche it has become, that she is, in fact, her mother. Her story is as relevant for its psychological and spiritual depth as it is for its literary strength. She describes her mother early in the book as “warm and sarcastic, hysterical and generous, ironic and judgmental, and, occasionally, what she thought of as affectionate: that rough, bullying style she assumed when overcome with the tenderness she most feared” (11). Gornick could just as easily be writing about herself, and on some level, she understands this. It is a fundamental truth of human nature that we judge others based on what we fear within ourselves. Gornick articulates this perfectly in the triadic love equation between herself, her mother and Nettie:

“It was a given that the more uncertain we were, the more self-righteous we would become. It was necessary for each of us to feel special, different, destined for a superior end. Divided against ourselves, we withheld sympathy from one another. Secretly, each of us identified a collection of undesirable traits in the others from which she separated herself, as though disassociation equaled deliverance …But judgment did not bring amelioration” (114).

The clarity with which Gornick observes her mother–and everyone in her experience–is wrought through recognition. She details the highs and lows of her romantic life not for the seductive glamour or humor of it all, but to illustrate the fact that she cannot escape her mother (or her father); like all of us, her psyche will keep seeking out reflections to recreate different versions of the same formative trauma in order to heal. When she writes of her lover Joe that “We thought because we were always talking we were connecting” (167), she may as well be talking about she and her mother, walking their rounds of the city and arguing on heated summer nights. It is through feeling that we truly heal. Not through venting and blaming, as Gornick’s mother demonstrated by giving herself over wholeheartedly to the victim trance; but through owning every reflection in one’s life, thereby facing the fear of connection that drives so many people’s routine avoidance. By training a clear and discerning lens on her own life, particularly the ways in which she was socialized, sexualized, and disconnected, Gornick is able to at least acknowledge when she herself is getting mired in “victim.” In the end, though it may not look like a happy resolution, Gornick has achieved a level of wholeness that, perhaps ironically, looks like detachment:

“A degree of distance has been permanently achieved. I glimpse the joys of detachment. This little bit of space provides me with the intermittent but useful excitement that comes of believing I begin and end with myself” (200).

This final bit of wisdom is indispensable. By owning up to the reflection of herself in her mother–however painful it may be to offer the love and acceptance she didn’t receive–Gornick does indeed begin and end with herself.(less)

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May 31, 2009 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

At the end of Fierce Attachments I wanted to google image her. Why? Why was it so important to know what the feminist daydreamer who had let life pass her by looked like?
Also, who talks to their mother like that?
But this is pretty great:
"In the face of silence I talked rapidly and at overwhelming length to fill what I experienced as the void, exhausting myself and those who had brought down on me the punishing need to speak words, words, words.”

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Jul 28, 2012 Kirsti rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: anger, arts-and-photography, imagination, memoir, waah-waaaah-nobody-loves-me

Brilliant, enraged, astonishingly self-absorbed artist reflects on her lousy childhood, her flawed mother, her inadequate lovers, and her wonderful city. Although the author seems to be a colossal jerk, and I would not want to have coffee with her, the book is very intelligent and powerful--especially when she discusses her next-door neighbor and the neighbor's son. I finished it in one sitting.

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Aug 15, 2009 Elyssa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

Vivian Gornick is a skillful writer, but this memoir never seemed to permeate me the way stronger memoirs do. I did enjoy reading about her experience of growing up in The Bronx as well as her marriage and relationships as an adult. I also Googled the author about halfway through the book and learned that she had fabricated a few parts of the memoir, which impacted the remainder of my reading experience.

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Jan 24, 2009 Brandi rated it 2 of 5 stars

I suffered through this book to be honest. I thought the relationship between mother and daughter was ambivalent and hateful at the same time. That being said, I think the book was well written, but reminded me too much of my own relationship with my mother for me to enjoy it.

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Jan 23, 2009 Jamie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book one cold winter afternoon in front of a small wood stove. For that afternoon I was enthralled by Gornick's willingness to expose her life, the struggles she suffered from and the struggles she created and finally her ability to hold it all without struggle or separation.

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May 27, 2009 Mindy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Gornick tackles her past with questions; one senses that, at the heart of her study of her relationship with her mother, are questions that feel absolutely important. This is no meandering through memories; it feels almost academic in its rigor. Gornick is such a smart lady, though, that it's absorbing and interesting, and I buy into the importance of her probing of her relationship with her mother. Great read.

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Feb 28, 2012 Abby added it

What to do with this...the reading experience was nice, but I am a tad suspicious of the way she fits her life into a neat narrative arc. Enjoyable but probably not something I will return to.

Favorite BRILLIANT quote: "We cannot depend on change, but we can depend on surprise. However, we cannot depend on surprise either. This keeps us on our toes."

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May 30, 2012 A.M. O'Malley rated it 5 of 5 stars

This story has kept me up late devouring it's lovely dissected and reassembled prose. Gornick truly is the mother of memoir. Read it if you've ever had a complicated relationship with your mother, battled with your creative life, had to balance love and work or had a romantic relationship fall down around you. Or, just read it. I vote for the latter.

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Sep 27, 2009 Kristen rated it 3 of 5 stars

There's a lot I appreciated about this memoir -- Gornick's evocation of place, beautiful prose, insightful passages and the intertwined structure of the narrative. However, I found it difficult to connect with the narrator. I don't think it was a failure in the writing, just more of a personality conflict.

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May 11, 2013 Alda rated it 3 of 5 stars

The writing is good, whereas the subject matter is not particularly interesting. The several insights concerning the author's life needed more connection and more work. The book comes out as incomplete and needlessly fragmentary.

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Mar 06, 2013 Sivia Del rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved the way Vivian Gornick moved from the present to the past, while giving the reader a look into her relationship with her mother. We're able to see how this relationship affected many of her other relationships throughout her life. While she and her mother walk arm and arm through the streets of Manhattan, we learn about the two women, their lives and their emotional bond with one another. I enjoyed it very much.

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Apr 05, 2013 Jim Seitz rated it 4 of 5 stars

A strong memoir about women and relationships between mothers and daughters. I found Gornick's language and thinking compelling.

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Mar 05, 2010 Jennifer Munro rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a fine book, and I've seen it praised in many places, but it did not resonate with me personally. I most enjoyed the "present-day" scenes where she is taking walks around New York with her aging mother.

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Dec 30, 2009 Maritess rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fantastic original book about someone with an ordinary NY/Bronx life. Great example of what masterful writing can accomplish.

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Oct 10, 2012 AnnMarie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Someone told me to read this because it is "strange." It's not all that strange, but a cool memoir. Worth reading.

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About Vivian Gornick

Date of Birth: 1935

Vivian Gornick is an American critic, essayist, and memoirist. For many years she wrote for the Village Voice. She currently teaches writing at The New School. For the 2007-2008 academic year, she will be a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She caused a controversy when she said that she had invented parts of Fierce Attachments, her largely autobiographica...more

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