Debra Gwartney's Live Through This: Your Thoughts Here?

When your kid does something that hurts you or someone else, if you've got any kind of conscience, your main and lasting response is: Where did I go wrong? Yes, there's often anger, too, but that's not what haunts you. Gwartney has had more than ten years to process her anger. It manifests less as the "fury" that you suggest is missing but in her chilly denial of what's happening to her family during the early days of the girls' despair. We all cope differently and in complicated ways, and this was the mechanism that Gwartney used to keep it together while raising two other daughters as a single mother.

The theme and repeated device in her memoir is to reflect on the question: "What kind of mother loses her kids to the streets?" Gwartney courageously and thoughtfully faces that question, while an angrier novel might merely deflect it. Your suggesting that there's not enough rage feels like a projection of what you think she should feel.

As for needing "more emotional honesty," I'm not sure what you mean. Reading the memoir made me emotional and raw for days. I'm still moved by some of the scenes when I think about them. You don't get that without a certain amount of emotional intensity.

Live Through This was a thoroughly satisfying read-- instructive to me as both a mother and a writer. I was surprised and disappointed by your review of one of the best memoirs I've read recently.

Your review didn't agree with my own opinion, therefore you must not have read the book! It's that simple! And besides, I'm a good friend of Debra's, so anything you say that sounds like "criticism" will be met with righteous anger!