Review: Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir by Melissa Cistaro

Dear Lit Loves,

Greetings!  I am proud to say that I completed reading the newly released memoir entitled Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistaro.  What triggered my interest in this particular book?  Well, the memoir is about the time span of when the author's mother left the family until when the author gets a call years later from her mother's sister letting her know that her mom is dying.  The ultimate question that reels the reader into the story is what happened to cause the mother to up and leave her family and will the author return to see her mother upon learning that her mother is close to death. 

The synopsis of the memoir is this:  A mother decides to pack and leave her young family which included a daughter and two older brothers along with their dad.  Actually, I think the mom in this book became defeated by the demands of motherhood and exhausted from the responsibilities as well.  I  think the author's mom wanted to explore her options as an independent woman and I think she was also a creative type who wanted to be free to explore what she really wanted to do with her life.  Furthermore, I think this particular mother wanted peace, quiet, and to live in a wide open space in the country.  So the memoir is told with one chapter reflecting on the author's childhood, family, and life without her mother and then the next chapter focuses on what she decides to do upon learning her mother is currently dying.  So the reader sees what transpires as the author matures from age five and grows up without her mom and is limited to short visits with her mom.  She elaborates on what happens to her family once the mom "checks out" of living with the family.  Some aspects of the author's experience were traumatic while others were quite moving in that the author becomes a mom herself and reflects on how she approaches parenthood given that her mother left the family when she was around five or six years of age.

The author learns quite a bit about her mother while visiting her when her mother has just days to live.  Most interestingly, the author discovers her mother wrote to her and her brothers, but never mailed the letters.  I won't give away the ending as I don't want to spoil this book for future readers.  The book was written quite clearly and concisely.  There was no use of overly frilly language.  I liked that she explained the experience in a very vivid and raw fashion.  Additionally, I liked how the author analyzed how she was and was not influenced by her mother leaving the family and by the mother only visiting the children sporadically.  It causes the author to examine its effect on her as a mother currently.

I selected to read this book as I just lost my father recently.  And I wondered how someone in this author's position would handle the death of a mother who essentially vacated her daughter's life.  It made me especially grateful for my dad as he came from a broken home, yet he was married to my mom for fifty years. And he was an extremely devoted dad who never lost contact with "the child"within him.   I do not have children of my own, but I often reflect on what my dad taught me in terms of life lessons and the development of a strict work ethic as well as the spiritual strength he always maintained in the face of a third recurrence of the brutal disease known as Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma.  I am natured like my dad in many ways.  He always used to say that I got my looks from my mom and my character from him.  I still miss him to this day and he has only been gone for two months. 

I did discover toward the final one third of the book where there were sentences that did not make sense because words were omitted.  Actually, there were several errors like this.  I'm not sure if this was due to an editorial problem or possibly a printing problem with the book.  Overall, I would recommend this memoir and I found the author's life quite fascinating.

Currently, I am reading My Stroke of Insight:  A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Dr. Jill Bote Taylor and perusing fall 2015 memoir releases to determine if there are any "regular people" memoirs that I would read because I do not read celebrity memoirs.  I am all about the lives of real, regular people and their experiences.  So until my next review or publishing update, I bid you Happy Reading!

Best,
Grace
(Amy)