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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Memorial Memoirs: Absolutely Delicious & Apprenticed to My Mother

7/12/2020

7 Comments

 
I’ve recently read these two memoirs which celebrate the fortitude of the authors’ mothers, especially in later life. Both stories are precipitated by a death: in the case of Alison Jean Lester’s memoir, it’s her mother’s confrontation with terminal cancer; for Geoff Le Pard, it’s the revelation of a new side of his mother’s character on becoming a widow. Both are touching tributes, peppered with poetry and humour.

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Absolutely Delicious: a Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying by Alison Jean Lester

We all die, but even in this extraordinary year we don’t talk much about our own mortality. So a book that chronicles a death as the conclusion of a life well-lived is as sharp and satisfying as a gin and tonic with lime.
 
Valerie Lester perceived her move into a hospice some months after being diagnosed with terminal cancer as “a retirement from things as well as from activity”. In this memoir, peppered with poetry, and illustrations by Mary Ann Frye, Alison Jean Lester honours her mother’s decision to forego life-prolonging treatment in order to enjoy the life she had left.
 
It’s a story of love and acceptance and knowing oneself well enough to choose the manner of letting go. Her gradual detachment seems a reversal of the attachments we learn in infancy and the unsettled period, notable even in someone reconciled to death, parallels the awkward journey through the birth canal. Uncomfortable as that may be, there’s an uplifting message in the circularity: like plants and like other animals, we die so others can be born.
 
Not a fan of memoir, I wouldn’t have read this if I hadn’t enjoyed the author’s novels, the most recent being Yuki Means Happiness, but I’m glad I did.


Apprenticed to My Mother by Geoff Le Pard

As the lone woman in a household of males, Barbara Le Pard seemed a shadowy figure to the younger of her two sons. When his father died, Geoff assumed he’d have to step up his support for his mother. A successful lawyer about to turn fifty, with two children himself, Geoff was about to learn a surprising lesson: it wasn’t his father who’d been the driving force of the family, but his mother. And now there was a vacancy, if not for a husband then for another Le Pard to manage. By default, Geoff got the job.
 
With touching details, and his trademark self-deprecatory humour, this is a moving memoir of the power behind the throne. A tribute to a dying breed (no pun intended) of twentieth century women who, neither submitting to nor rebelling against their second-class status, subverted it in the service of the family they loved. And were loved in return.
 
I felt I knew Barbara a little already from Geoff’s blog, and especially from this thread about his parents’ war-time romance, but was charmed to meet her again. And her dismay at discovering her facial wrinkles after the removal of her cataracts really made me laugh. I think the narrative could have been made a little tighter – although it’s not overly long – but overall it’s an entertaining and uplifting read.
 
I received a copy of this book from the author for my entry in the 2018 Flash Fiction Rodeo.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
7 Comments
Norah Colvin
8/12/2020 07:16:43 am

I can't believe I've read, or am reading, both books you review, Anne. That must be a first. I am currently reading Absolutely Delicious (upon your recommendation) and read Apprenticed to My Mother some time ago. Absolutely Delicious is exactly what the title says and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I like that Alison shares what she has learned by supporting her parents (and an aunt) through the ends of their lives until their death. Although both my parents have gone, her lessons and reflections prompt me to prepare for my own death, somewhere in the unforeseeable future.
Geoff's book was full of Geoff humour and I thoroughly enjoyed it too. These are two very different books, written for very different purposes and audiences but both do what they do very well.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
8/12/2020 08:34:23 am

Definitely a first! I hope your death's a long way off but good to prepare for how you (interesting I'm not saying 'we') could spend the last days / weeks with family.

Reply
Derbhile Graham link
8/12/2020 07:40:38 am

I've taken a bit of a change of direction to become a funeral celebrant and I firmly believe that the time just before and after a death does not have to be completely filled with sadness. I'm looking to increase my understanding of this subject, and the first memoir by Allison Jean Lester will definitely help with that. The second one sounds interesting too - Barbara actually sounds like many an Irish mammy!

Reply
Anne Goodwin
8/12/2020 08:38:53 am

Wow, fascinating change of direction. One I've wondered about (but only superficially) since my neighbour's secular funeral, organised by his son, left us all asking 'Is that it?' I hopoe you're writing about your new role *goes to check it out*

Alison will be pleased at your interest and I must make sure Geoff sees your comment about the Irish Mammy.

Reply
geoff le pard
8/12/2020 09:02:37 am

An Irish Mammy. I'm sure mum would have been delighted though Dad's teasing might have generated a suitable response. Thank you and good luck with the celebrant work. The celebrant who conducted mum's funeral did a splendid job. Such an important role

Reply
susan scott
9/12/2020 12:28:04 pm

Lovely reviews thank you Anne. Although death is a passage of gravitas, its strange bedfellow is humour and it sounds as if both books deliver. Success to both authors.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
9/12/2020 05:26:44 pm

Thanks for reading and commenting, Susan.

Reply



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