Circling My Mother

Download or read book Circling My Mother written by Mary Gordon and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing her exceptional talent for detail, character, and scene to bear on the life of her hard-working single mother, a bestselling author gives us a deeply felt and powerfully moving book about their relationship. “A daring and perceptive work of memory, catharsis and literary grace.” —Los Angeles Times Anna Gagliano Gordon, who died in 2002 at the age of 94, was the personification of the culture of the mid-century American Catholic working class. A hard-working single mother—Mary Gordon's father died when she was still a girl—she managed to hold down a job, dress smartly, raise her daughter on her own, and worship the beauty in life with a surprising joie de vivre. Toward the end of Anna's life, we watch the author care for her mother in old age, beginning to reclaim from memory the vivid woman who helped her sail forth into her own life.