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Don't Say a Word: A Daughter's Two Cents
Edna and Leo, a perpetually warring, tyrannical pair in their 80s, begin wintering In Mexico, where they abandon their usual prudence to embrace adventure and a bevy of sketchy new friends. Soon, Edna adopts a pair of shyster builders whom she trusts over her own architect-daughter Elizabeth, and a farcical house results. Blithely indifferent to the calamities that result, the pair refuse all help from their too-compliant only child. Later, following her mother’s sudden death, Elizabeth’s wise, principled father attempts to fill his late wife’s shoes with a string of loopy, live-in housekeepers―with privileges, he hopes. Before it is over the Mexican escapade will bring down the kind of disasters commonly found in pulp fiction. Why can’t Elizabeth stop any of this from happening? No matter the madness, she cannot confront her parents any more than she ever could. In the end, the surprising way in which they come undone reveals just what they spent their lives trying to hide, thereby setting her free. Though unique in its loony details, Don’t Say A Word! will resonate with beleaguered adult-children everywhere who will recognize the special misery of watching, helpless, as stubborn, diminished parents careen precariously toward the end of life.
- GenresMemoir
328 pages, Paperback
Published May 11, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 18, 2021
Harebrained, kooky, delirious, naïve, wacky, confused, foolish, hoodwinked: all adjectives that could be attributed to Edna and Leo Roper, the parents of author Elizabeth Roper Marcus. In her memoir, Don't Say a Word: A Daughter's Two Cents, Marcus takes the reader on a riveting journey into the last adventure her parents embark upon: they begin relocating three months a year from their long-lived safe haven of Manhattan to Ajijic, Jalisco, an hour south of Guadalajara in Mexico. Ajijic is a small city full of retired American and Canadian expats on the shores of scenic Lake Chapala. There's nothing wrong with that; but the Ropers turn it into everything that can go wrong.
Marcus goes back in time to show how she was raised by her controlling, unyielding, unempathetic parents. They are successful in their careers, but seemingly not in their personal lives, though they put up a good façade. Readers get an idea of Marcus' upbringing by this one question she poses early on: “Do all children imagine they live in a scary fairytale?” Edna and Leo constantly bicker with one another in high-pitched voices, neither backing down. But it is when, in their early 80s, they decide to have a condominium built for them in Ajijic that things really begin to unravel for the couple. Of course, they don't see that.
“What my parents were after was a new frontier. Mexico offered a sense of discovery, a touch of exoticism, the thrill of a bargain,” Marcus deduces. However, she later realizes, “It was in Ajijic that my parents began to progress from cheerfully undaunted to alarmingly unfazed....Soon they'd be throwing themselves into cockamamie building projects and courting a cast of oddballs they might have previously crossed the street to avoid.”
They allow themselves to be hoodwinked by their condominium builder and supposed interior designer, Max and Edye Wolfe, a couple in their 60s. What transpires comes as an ongoing shock to Marcus, as one disastrous decision follows another in the building fiasco of their condominium. Marcus is a highly successful architect herself; yet, ironically, her parents do not seek her talent or even advice. They seem unabashedly enamored with the Wolfes, who, in their eyes, can do no wrong—no matter how much wrong they do at the Ropers' expense. And what an incalculable expense it becomes.
It is through observing the never-ending, disastrous events that occur to her parents in Ajijic that Marcus finally comes to view her parents in their true light. She comes to recognize their insecurities and fears; neither feels quite adequate enough for the other. So they raise a daughter who feels the same way about herself towards her parents. She comes to realize that her parents are not infallible. And in spite of their decades of back-and-forth bickering, they held a deeply rooted love for each other—and for their daughter.
Marcus is a gifted storyteller, and her memoir is a page-turner. It is written in a way that evokes every emotion imaginable in the scenes recorded. Hers is a beautifully written tale that is likely true of many children observing their parents advance in age. Marcus' writing is fresh, comical, revealing, poignant. It hits you in the heart from all conceivable angles.
Story Circle Book Reviews thanks Paula Shaffer Robertson for this review.
Marcus goes back in time to show how she was raised by her controlling, unyielding, unempathetic parents. They are successful in their careers, but seemingly not in their personal lives, though they put up a good façade. Readers get an idea of Marcus' upbringing by this one question she poses early on: “Do all children imagine they live in a scary fairytale?” Edna and Leo constantly bicker with one another in high-pitched voices, neither backing down. But it is when, in their early 80s, they decide to have a condominium built for them in Ajijic that things really begin to unravel for the couple. Of course, they don't see that.
“What my parents were after was a new frontier. Mexico offered a sense of discovery, a touch of exoticism, the thrill of a bargain,” Marcus deduces. However, she later realizes, “It was in Ajijic that my parents began to progress from cheerfully undaunted to alarmingly unfazed....Soon they'd be throwing themselves into cockamamie building projects and courting a cast of oddballs they might have previously crossed the street to avoid.”
They allow themselves to be hoodwinked by their condominium builder and supposed interior designer, Max and Edye Wolfe, a couple in their 60s. What transpires comes as an ongoing shock to Marcus, as one disastrous decision follows another in the building fiasco of their condominium. Marcus is a highly successful architect herself; yet, ironically, her parents do not seek her talent or even advice. They seem unabashedly enamored with the Wolfes, who, in their eyes, can do no wrong—no matter how much wrong they do at the Ropers' expense. And what an incalculable expense it becomes.
It is through observing the never-ending, disastrous events that occur to her parents in Ajijic that Marcus finally comes to view her parents in their true light. She comes to recognize their insecurities and fears; neither feels quite adequate enough for the other. So they raise a daughter who feels the same way about herself towards her parents. She comes to realize that her parents are not infallible. And in spite of their decades of back-and-forth bickering, they held a deeply rooted love for each other—and for their daughter.
Marcus is a gifted storyteller, and her memoir is a page-turner. It is written in a way that evokes every emotion imaginable in the scenes recorded. Hers is a beautifully written tale that is likely true of many children observing their parents advance in age. Marcus' writing is fresh, comical, revealing, poignant. It hits you in the heart from all conceivable angles.
Story Circle Book Reviews thanks Paula Shaffer Robertson for this review.
June 3, 2021
I got my copy in the mail yesterday. I love this book! It is so funny and generous. I sat down and read more than half in one sitting. I would have read into the night but I have to watch my sleep right now. I have things I have to do today, but finishing the book in the afternoon will be my reward.
The way Elizabeth Roper Marcus captures her family members rivals Thurber and Sedaris. But Thurber is a little more fantastic and Sedaris at times more dark.
I have two favorite parts so far. SPOILER ALERT
First, Masada.
I thought it was really terrific that after this long saga of the author's inability to break the hold of her parents on her we see her husband's snarling at his. Especially since he’s a shrink. There are few of us if any not triggered by childhood dynamics.
But the real reason I loved Masada was the serenity at the top. There are certain places where you feel the power of the dead and of history. I did not feel this at the Acropolis, crawling with tourists, but I felt it at Delphi even though I was desperately sick with food poisoning at the time. Also felt it at Gettysburg though I was a kid with no experience of life or death.
In addition, the power of ritual. Here we have a family come half way round the world to enact a rite most of them don’t believe in. And the squabbling kids have worked hard to make it happen in spite of the adults and probably their own ambivalence. Even so, for one little hiatus, this rite has the power to connect then all as one, when pretty much nothing else has. I think the author captured this beautifully. And also, alas, how quickly that can fall apart again.
A later passage I love:
"I almost never thought of my mother’s diagnosis directly, but the word “leukemia” regularly flashed in the back of my mind like subliminal advertising, implanting itself. The drive to the coast was an exact rerun of the previous year’s, but this time the passing scenery looked strangely lit, the desert starker than before, and the rain forest that abruptly followed it, Rousseau-like. Time seemed broken into a string of moments, each particularly vivid. Our words hung longer in the air and carried more meaning. Most significantly, Edna’s news shifted everything just enough to dislodge emotional camouflage, leaving long-hidden truths suddenly exposed."
To me this is really beautiful writing. Hemingway, whose writing I very reluctantly admire (at times) was good at capturing how the nearness of death heightens our experience of life. This author also captures this in a way that is totally original to her.
I also found myself thinking about her writing that her mother had not been told her prognosis. But the author only know this from her mother. The doctor may be in Mexico, but even so I find it hard to believe that he didn’t say something to the mother when death was so near.
I was in the room with my dad in his hospital room when the doctor told him his test results and that he would die within a year without chemo. I know absolutely that he understood that. He refused the chemo.
I was also in the room a year later when we took my father into the emergency room two days before he died. His long-time internist, a friend who knew him well, came in. My dad asked him if he had a chronic condition. This kind of blew me out of the water. Had he spent the year in denial about his death? How could that have happened?
I will love that doc forever for his response. He said, “I’ve seen you survive things with miraculous resilience, so maybe you’ll throw this off too. Otherwise, yes it will be chronic.”
The wise doc understood that my father wasn’t asking about his illness. He was seeking a little hope. He was ready to die, but on his way out, he wanted to hang onto some hope that he wouldn’t.
The author criticizes herself for not looking at the report in her suitcase, but death is an individual and mysterious thing. Dying people and their loved ones often know and don’t know. It seems to me that the mother got the death she wanted, far more than most people do. And like cats in nursing homes those closest to her must have known on some level that death was very near because they all collaborated to give her the death she wanted. It wasn’t just the father and mother who were part of the dance.
This mother just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would have wanted to be led through some overt and organized Kubla-Ross death.
One final note, when the family all headed up to Masada on the cable car, I had a sense of impending doom, probably because the one copy of the local paper that I’ve read lately somehow thought it was important to report the recent cable car accident (in Italy?) on the front page, but also because the author lets us foresee the disintegration ahead on the way down. However, I did not see the Zapatistas coming, even though of course I knew the author was headed into their territory. What a story. And I love it that Marcus is aware that her encounter in the square looked more real on TV than in real life!
What a book this is! It generously rewards the reader. Those who read it will love it and enjoy it.
It reminds me of Aristotle and Horace’s dictum that art should both instruct and entertain. Marcus has hugely succeeded at doing both. I’m so glad she put her two cents out there. Finally!
The way Elizabeth Roper Marcus captures her family members rivals Thurber and Sedaris. But Thurber is a little more fantastic and Sedaris at times more dark.
I have two favorite parts so far. SPOILER ALERT
First, Masada.
I thought it was really terrific that after this long saga of the author's inability to break the hold of her parents on her we see her husband's snarling at his. Especially since he’s a shrink. There are few of us if any not triggered by childhood dynamics.
But the real reason I loved Masada was the serenity at the top. There are certain places where you feel the power of the dead and of history. I did not feel this at the Acropolis, crawling with tourists, but I felt it at Delphi even though I was desperately sick with food poisoning at the time. Also felt it at Gettysburg though I was a kid with no experience of life or death.
In addition, the power of ritual. Here we have a family come half way round the world to enact a rite most of them don’t believe in. And the squabbling kids have worked hard to make it happen in spite of the adults and probably their own ambivalence. Even so, for one little hiatus, this rite has the power to connect then all as one, when pretty much nothing else has. I think the author captured this beautifully. And also, alas, how quickly that can fall apart again.
A later passage I love:
"I almost never thought of my mother’s diagnosis directly, but the word “leukemia” regularly flashed in the back of my mind like subliminal advertising, implanting itself. The drive to the coast was an exact rerun of the previous year’s, but this time the passing scenery looked strangely lit, the desert starker than before, and the rain forest that abruptly followed it, Rousseau-like. Time seemed broken into a string of moments, each particularly vivid. Our words hung longer in the air and carried more meaning. Most significantly, Edna’s news shifted everything just enough to dislodge emotional camouflage, leaving long-hidden truths suddenly exposed."
To me this is really beautiful writing. Hemingway, whose writing I very reluctantly admire (at times) was good at capturing how the nearness of death heightens our experience of life. This author also captures this in a way that is totally original to her.
I also found myself thinking about her writing that her mother had not been told her prognosis. But the author only know this from her mother. The doctor may be in Mexico, but even so I find it hard to believe that he didn’t say something to the mother when death was so near.
I was in the room with my dad in his hospital room when the doctor told him his test results and that he would die within a year without chemo. I know absolutely that he understood that. He refused the chemo.
I was also in the room a year later when we took my father into the emergency room two days before he died. His long-time internist, a friend who knew him well, came in. My dad asked him if he had a chronic condition. This kind of blew me out of the water. Had he spent the year in denial about his death? How could that have happened?
I will love that doc forever for his response. He said, “I’ve seen you survive things with miraculous resilience, so maybe you’ll throw this off too. Otherwise, yes it will be chronic.”
The wise doc understood that my father wasn’t asking about his illness. He was seeking a little hope. He was ready to die, but on his way out, he wanted to hang onto some hope that he wouldn’t.
The author criticizes herself for not looking at the report in her suitcase, but death is an individual and mysterious thing. Dying people and their loved ones often know and don’t know. It seems to me that the mother got the death she wanted, far more than most people do. And like cats in nursing homes those closest to her must have known on some level that death was very near because they all collaborated to give her the death she wanted. It wasn’t just the father and mother who were part of the dance.
This mother just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would have wanted to be led through some overt and organized Kubla-Ross death.
One final note, when the family all headed up to Masada on the cable car, I had a sense of impending doom, probably because the one copy of the local paper that I’ve read lately somehow thought it was important to report the recent cable car accident (in Italy?) on the front page, but also because the author lets us foresee the disintegration ahead on the way down. However, I did not see the Zapatistas coming, even though of course I knew the author was headed into their territory. What a story. And I love it that Marcus is aware that her encounter in the square looked more real on TV than in real life!
What a book this is! It generously rewards the reader. Those who read it will love it and enjoy it.
It reminds me of Aristotle and Horace’s dictum that art should both instruct and entertain. Marcus has hugely succeeded at doing both. I’m so glad she put her two cents out there. Finally!
June 18, 2021
This book is a rare gem! It is by far the best memoir I have ever read, and I read a lot of memoirs. I loved every minute of it. Written from a compliant daughter's perspective about the later years of her aging parents lives it is often funny, sometimes maddening and always heart felt. This book is so relatable, anyone with aging parents will be nodding their heads yes as they read. It hit home for me.
Edna and Lou are well into their "golden years" when they decide to spend their winters in Mexico, eventually building a house there, in partnership with new found and somewhat sketchy friends. While the author watches them acting completely unlike themselves and worrying at some of the more disastrous decisions they make she finds it impossible to step in and intervene. Knowing her parent's reaction will be negative she says nothing, being the compliant dutiful daughter she has always been. Always striving to please them and fulfill their image of what a good daughter should be. Marcus bites her tongue and watches from the sidelines as they make one bad decision after another, each one more devastating than the last.
With some part of her aware that some of this change in their behavior and personalities she is seeing is due to their age, it is still not a reality she can or wants to accept. She can not bring herself to see them in any light besides the one she has always seen. They are stern, rigid, and uncompromising, finding fault in every little thing, holding high expectations of everyone, their selves included. This is how she perceives them and it is something that will not change easily.
The author tells this story in a humorous manner, you will be laughing at Edna and Leo's escapades, you can't help but to laugh. At the same time you will empathize with Elizabeth and her plight of what to do and how far should she put her nose into their business. We all have an image of who our parents are, we see them in a certain way and when anything contradicts that image we tend to reject it, labeling it as wrong. Shifting roles as parents get older is a hard thing to deal with. We are used to them being the leaders, us the followers. They are the caretakers no matter what our age becomes we see them this way. I know I would immediately turn into a child everytime I walked into my parents home. It did not matter how old I was, 20, 25 or even at 50 years old. When I was with them I was that child I used to be, they were the parents I remembered. The author tells of the difficulties we encounter when we find it hard to shift our outlooks. As our parents change and age we ask, who are these people? Have they always felt this way and simply hid it all these years? With age we seem to lose our inhabitations some, is this the true personality coming to the forefront that was hidden before? As she begins to understand what aging really means she begins to realize that our parents are above all us only human, with the same kind of insecurities and faults as the rest of us. And yes, believe it or not our parents are capable of making mistakes, as shocking as that may seem it is true!
Everyone should read this book. I am giving it 5 stars and highly, highly recommend it to all readers with parents. If I could give it more stars I would.
I would like to thank She Writes Press and @BookSparks for the free ARC of this book, I am leaving my honest review in return.
Edna and Lou are well into their "golden years" when they decide to spend their winters in Mexico, eventually building a house there, in partnership with new found and somewhat sketchy friends. While the author watches them acting completely unlike themselves and worrying at some of the more disastrous decisions they make she finds it impossible to step in and intervene. Knowing her parent's reaction will be negative she says nothing, being the compliant dutiful daughter she has always been. Always striving to please them and fulfill their image of what a good daughter should be. Marcus bites her tongue and watches from the sidelines as they make one bad decision after another, each one more devastating than the last.
With some part of her aware that some of this change in their behavior and personalities she is seeing is due to their age, it is still not a reality she can or wants to accept. She can not bring herself to see them in any light besides the one she has always seen. They are stern, rigid, and uncompromising, finding fault in every little thing, holding high expectations of everyone, their selves included. This is how she perceives them and it is something that will not change easily.
The author tells this story in a humorous manner, you will be laughing at Edna and Leo's escapades, you can't help but to laugh. At the same time you will empathize with Elizabeth and her plight of what to do and how far should she put her nose into their business. We all have an image of who our parents are, we see them in a certain way and when anything contradicts that image we tend to reject it, labeling it as wrong. Shifting roles as parents get older is a hard thing to deal with. We are used to them being the leaders, us the followers. They are the caretakers no matter what our age becomes we see them this way. I know I would immediately turn into a child everytime I walked into my parents home. It did not matter how old I was, 20, 25 or even at 50 years old. When I was with them I was that child I used to be, they were the parents I remembered. The author tells of the difficulties we encounter when we find it hard to shift our outlooks. As our parents change and age we ask, who are these people? Have they always felt this way and simply hid it all these years? With age we seem to lose our inhabitations some, is this the true personality coming to the forefront that was hidden before? As she begins to understand what aging really means she begins to realize that our parents are above all us only human, with the same kind of insecurities and faults as the rest of us. And yes, believe it or not our parents are capable of making mistakes, as shocking as that may seem it is true!
Everyone should read this book. I am giving it 5 stars and highly, highly recommend it to all readers with parents. If I could give it more stars I would.
I would like to thank She Writes Press and @BookSparks for the free ARC of this book, I am leaving my honest review in return.
May 9, 2021
I enjoyed reading this book. The stars of the book are the author's parents. Edna and Leo. While, every decision that they made had the same outcome of turning into a disaster; they still made them without a care in the world. Well they did not listen to their daughter when she gave advice.
Every time that the outcome turned out bad, Edna and Leo would argue and in wonderment about the predicament that they found themselves in. At first I was like, how can they not see the signs flashing bright red in their faces and with their daughter cautioning them but after a bit I actually found it entertaining and kind of endearing.
I was not sure what I was expecting from this book but I can tell you the words "entertaining" and "endearing" did not come to my mind. This is one of the more real books I have read. I will not be like the title of the book "Don't Say a Word" and will share with other readers about this book.
Every time that the outcome turned out bad, Edna and Leo would argue and in wonderment about the predicament that they found themselves in. At first I was like, how can they not see the signs flashing bright red in their faces and with their daughter cautioning them but after a bit I actually found it entertaining and kind of endearing.
I was not sure what I was expecting from this book but I can tell you the words "entertaining" and "endearing" did not come to my mind. This is one of the more real books I have read. I will not be like the title of the book "Don't Say a Word" and will share with other readers about this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2021
I received this book two weeks and didn’t get a chance to read it until these last couple of days.
It is the author’s journey into her parents aging. Adventures galore and hidden parental quirks leave you laughing, feeling empathy but also freeing as you realize that her family is like yours- ultimately filled with love.
This memoir is magical and not to be missed.
It is the author’s journey into her parents aging. Adventures galore and hidden parental quirks leave you laughing, feeling empathy but also freeing as you realize that her family is like yours- ultimately filled with love.
This memoir is magical and not to be missed.
May 24, 2021
Such a unique and quirky memoir! I loved the author’s perspective of her parents, both as a child growing up and into adulthood with a family of her own. The retirement town of Ajicjic near Guadalajara, Mexico makes for a setting that’s both interesting and at times a little sketchy. It is still a popular retirement location today, offering the same allure of affordability not offered here in the states. If you’re looking for a wonderful memoir full of humor, this is it!
September 24, 2021
An interesting memoir full of humor!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews