In this triumphant return to nonfiction after two critically acclaimed works of fiction, Mary Gordon gives us a rich, bittersweet memoir about her ...
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Aug 12, 2008
Sandra
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This book really makes one think about their relationship with their mom. I admired Mary's frankness. I wonder what her mother would have thought about all this? It was also interesting to read how Catholicism played such a huge role in how her mom saw the world, and those non Catholics who inhabited it. It made me remember the little Catholic girls in the neighborhood I grew up in. Her mom was really quite a remarkable woman. I am not sure that is what Mary believes, or wants us to believ
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Jun 22, 2011
Ann
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I read this book first and the memoir about her father (The Shadow Man, written in 1996) second. For me, that was the correct order. I think that if I had read the book about her father first, what I knew about the father would have gotten in the way of my understanding of the mother.
Circling My Mother was a fascinating attempt by the daughter to try to understand her mother. The title is perfect as Mary Gordon never does entirely understand her mother as she keeps trying (circling), u More...
Circling My Mother was a fascinating attempt by the daughter to try to understand her mother. The title is perfect as Mary Gordon never does entirely understand her mother as she keeps trying (circling), u More...
Feb 04, 2012
Vivian
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I just re-read this for my upcoming presentation @ library; I had read it and presented a conference paper on it when it was originally published. I think it is an excellent memoir by virtue of its style ("circling" the mother via a series of chapters that can each stand alone as essays, providing differing, yet overlapping, views); Gordon's facility with language; her stellar use of the art of Vuillard and, especially, Bonnard, and of the artistic rendering on Lanvin's Arpege bottle
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Dec 31, 2010
I already was not looking forward to reading this book as it is not the sort of book I generally enjoy. However, I have been proven wrong before by other book club selections, if for no other reason than talking about a book would help me to understand it better even if I did not enjoy it.
There is no such redemption for this selection. My standard "trial period" for a book is the first 50 pages. After page 32 I could continue no longer. Hopefully the author redeems herself by More...
There is no such redemption for this selection. My standard "trial period" for a book is the first 50 pages. After page 32 I could continue no longer. Hopefully the author redeems herself by More...
Dec 08, 2010
Suzy
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This is the second book I've read by Mary Gordon. I have an ambivalent attitude toward her as a writer. She writes well, but I think I don't like her as a person. (It would be interesting to see what I thought if I met her.) Mary Gordon's book about her mom is a lot about her herself, really. And she seems to harbor a lot of grudges and ill-will toward people in her family. Her self-pride--particularly about her childhood precocity--also seeps through a lot in an annoying way. I did the
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Feb 05, 2009
"I had hoped to tell not only the story of my mother's life," writes Mary Gordon, "but a larger story, a story that had implications beyond her immediate biography." While highly personal, Gordon successfully places her mother's life in the context of immigration, war, working-class Catholicism, and economic depression. But critics disagree just how effectively-or compassionately-Gordon captures her mother. Part of the disagreement has to do with what some reviewers describe
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Dec 26, 2010
Indra
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You can tell a poet wrote this book; the language is lovely and lyrical. "Circling My Mother" is an apt title, because that's what Gordon seems to do as a writer; she circles her mother, studies her, observes her both in the present and in the past. The book is just as much about some of her extended family as it is about her mother. The book seems to have been written to help her process the relationship, and I wonder if it helped her come any closer to doing so. It was really lik
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Mar 09, 2009
Marge
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While I appreciated Gordon's strong evocation of life for a pious Catholic in the 40's and 50's, and while I saw Gordon's desire to somehow explore how she herself had come to be who she is, I didn't feel her mother really came through. So much of who her mother was was colored for Gordon by what she became - demented. I know this is a memoir, but I found that focus on the sadly diminished, unapproachable mother, to be surprising. The glimpses of the childhood mother Gordon provides are warm
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Feb 17, 2009
Trish
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An upsetting book in some ways -- Mary Gordon's mother was very ill and very difficult in her later years -- but it's also rich with the stories of how Catholic women dealt with the world in the 20's, 30's, & 40's. I also loved the parts about her mother's friends and how nurturing they were of Mary Gordon when her father died. Most of her aunts -- the "Gagliano" girls -- were awful though. Mixed marriages were tough in those days, and there is a lot of mix here. (Gordon's grandmother
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Aug 03, 2010
Nancy
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I have to say, I find books about mother-daughter relationships weirdly fascinating. I like the title metaphor of this one: I can remember being a little girl who would wander away from my mother and find myself, moments later, drawn back into her orbit, a moon that could only stray so far and no further. Gordon's relationship with her mother is a trying one; her mother was a "working mother" when no mothers worked outside the home, and her father's premature death placed the mother
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May 19, 2008
Kyla
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After reading this (actually 3/4 before I flung it down in disgust)I wouldn't shake Mary Gordon's hand if she held it out to me. A memoir is all about personal perspective but hers is so bitter and warped and skewed and I don't ask for facts in my memoirs, not necessarily, but it seems so EXAGGERATED. For proof read the chapter about her Aunts and how she paints them in the vilest, bitterest colors and how she is just a sensitive child who was so terribly treated - I think I threw it down after
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Apr 22, 2008
Nomi
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Ultimately I felt this book was a good draft, allowing the author the opportunity to play with a unique structure (as she presents it, neither memoir nor biography) and get some things off her chest about her mother, her mother's life (and decline), and others closely connected to both her mother and herself. For me, knowing neither the author nor her mother, I found the voice discontinuous, sometimes that of the small child, sometimes the adolescent, sometimes the adult, but only for moments th
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Nov 11, 2007
Peg
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A memoir about a complex mother-daughter relationship, the author's tone is self-involved and excessively self-important. Even though each chapter's title begins with "My Mother and ___," the author makes this more a story about her own internal ruminations -- including an excessive use of literary/philosophical/artistic references -- and as a result provides a fairly two dimensional rendering of her mother. The author and her mother appear to have had a relationship that was part love
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Apr 15, 2010
Raenette
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I read this as a companion book to Company of Women for a friend. It was better than the other book, but once again the same phrases kept coming up. The author seems very full of herself even though it was supposed to be about her mother.
Sep 11, 2007
Cat
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This book made me think a lot about my own mother and grandmother, outside and beyond their relationship to me. I don't often consider them as women on their own, certainly not as much as perhaps I ought to. It's helpful, especially as I examine my relationship with my own mum, to keep in mind that she had a life before me, and that my grandmother had a life before her. It adds a dimension I'm glad to be reminded of.
I also really like the idea of a long line of female ancestors. More...
I also really like the idea of a long line of female ancestors. More...
Nov 03, 2009
Jessie
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This book is kind of a disaster. It has a few interesting anecdotes but really it is full of banal (sometimes baffling) observations from someone who is presumably too literate to know better.
Aug 26, 2010
Paula
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Among other things it was facinating to be introduced to the real people behind many of the characters in her books.
May 03, 2010
"Maybe someday" and "priority? are conflicted but there you have it. I want to read but don't do enough of it.
Mar 29, 2009
Lydia
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What a beautifully written book, a memoir of a woman who wants to remember all aspects of her mother....
Apr 04, 2009
Carol
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Mary Gordon didn't have one good thing to say about her mother - far too angry a memoir for me.
Feb 19, 2009
Maria
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this is one of the most beautiful, realistic depictions of a mother-daughter relationship that i've ever encountered. you will find little nostalgia here, little navel-gazing, but instead two complex, tangible, human women. gordon employs a mixture of detective work, personal reflection, and close readings of family "texts" (photographs, marginalia, travels) to "circle" her mother. ultimately, though, she can only circle her, never truly capture her; sometimes the ones we
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Mar 19, 2011
Ann
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I'm interested in memoir forms. In this one, Gordon devotes separate chapters to her mother's relationships with family members, bosses, priests, words and music, even world view. The multi-faceted approach adds up to a full, dynamic portrait of Gordon's mother, and reveals Gordon to the reader, as well.
Jan 26, 2009
Joyce
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Received as a gift - might not have chosen this book myself but glad I read it. A lot of this book centered about Mary Gordon's catholic upbringing, the church, the priests etc, very interesting. Mary cares for her mother who quite frankly is not that easy to love. Pretty good read, happy to lend it out if anyone wants it.
Jan 30, 2011
Daniel
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On something of a memoir kick of late, I found that this book resonated because of my own struggles with my parents' aging. The book has a deeply melancholy tone, but the author also celebrates qualities of her mother and her mother's life. Though the pages are steeped in sadness, there is something about the high quality of the writing that renders the book a form of sustenance. It's well worth your time if you have mixed feelings about your family history -- and who doesn't?
May 04, 2010
Liz
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A book for those who wish they knew their mothers before they became wives to our fathers and parents to us children.
Dec 26, 2007
Pinkpicnic
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Sort-of compelling, but only when the author forgets herself a little and talks about the mother. The passages on art are mortifying, and too thinly linked to the book's subject. Gordon seemed to have more than one thing on her mind for the subject of the book, and they lacked cogency. A truthful look at the strange creature that is a mother and woman, but in the end Gordon was undecided about what kind of book she was writing. It took me a month to slog through it.
Sep 25, 2007
Alison
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Immediately after reading this book, I am feeling that it is one of the best memoirs I've ever read. The title is apt, as Gordon discusses aspects of her mother's life (her family of origin, her job, her religion) that form overlapping circles, adding to Gordon's deepening understanding of the complicated woman who mothered her. After experiencing Gordon's excellent prose (fine-tuned yet never overwritten), I know I'll be reading more of her work.
