Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why.
Glamorous, charismatic and a compulsive liar, Susanna's mother seduced everyone who entered her orbit. With outrageous behavior and judgment tinged by drug use, she taught her child the art of sex and the benefits of lying. Susanna struggled to break out of this compelling world, determined, as many daughters are, not to become her mother.
Sonnenberg mines tender and startling memories as she writes of her fierce resolve to forge her independence, to become a woman capable of trust and to be a good mother to her own children. Her Last Death is riveting, disarming and searingly beautiful.
Susanna's mother gave her a copy of Penthouse when she was a ten-year-old, cocaine when she was 12, and seduced her boyfriend at 14. Sonnenberg recounts "the true calamity of being daughter to this mother." The glory of this memoir is that the author survived her traumatic childhood and somehow navigated her way to a deftly written book capturing her dismantled youth. The daughter of a glamorous, falling-down addict of a mother and a gifted, self-absorbed father, Sonnenberg never falls into the trap of attempting to analyze two people never meant to be parents. Instead, we are allowed to feel the strange and powerful familial currencies running between mother and daughter through the keenly observed writing of Sonnenberg. The writing is razor-sharp and raw, a significant feat considering the untethered early years of this immensely talented writer. --Molly Jay
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Haunting:
I've thought about this book for days since I finished it. It's not happy or pleasant. It's disturbing, sort of like watching a car accident about to happen; you can't turn your head and look away. Sonnenberg's mother was divorced, rich New York socialite who was obviously manic. She lied pathologically, was addicted to Demerol, snorted mountains of cocaine, and was obsessed with sex. She introduced Susanna to cocaine at 12, and gave her a warped understanding of sex. The book has lots and lots of... more info
Unhinged Parents Can Really Take It Out Of You:
Her Last Death is one of the best memoirs I've read in recent memory. It's not necessarily the most outrageous or exotic, but it manages to tread the line between description and emotion without veering too far into either one. Despite the fact that the book is about the relationship between (volatile) mother and daughter -- a relationship that is rife with complications under the best of circumstances -- it seems familiar, even in its most extreme. This is the story of growing up and living with... more info
Susanna's the Real Deal:
I met Susanna when I took a writing workshop from her in Montana. She's one of the most kind and generous women I have had the pleasure of meeting. I immediately bought her book and read it through in just a couple of days, which means I could not put it down. Many times people who write memoirs do so because they look back on a life that was very unusual and understand how it helped shape their thinking and decision making, sometimes to their own undoing. They know they have changed and wonder if their... more info
Having money takes away the sting:
This was a difficult book to read. I am not saying its was a bad book it kept interest pretty much throughout. I am not saying this woman was not abused, in some ways yes, but I do not think it warrented a book about it. the majority of the time the author basked in money, expensive clothes, vactions abroad, and money at her disposal. I am not saying money made it alright, it did not but it takes the sting out of it and there were times when her Mother was kind and decent and cared, she had emotional... more info
