MOTHER AND SON

Rating:
Summary: An exciting journey to self-knowledge with love as compass
Review: Michael Sledge takes the reader on an intimate journey from childhood to adulthood. Along the way, we see the transformation of his mother from a mythical Mary Poppins to a woman of flesh-and-blood characterized by her own frailties. All along the way, however, we are reminded of the great capacity for love in the most powerful of human relationships (Mother and Son) and its ability to give life to both parties over and over again. In the author we meet a boy who has inherited his mother's passion for life and struggles to maintain his idyllic view of the world in the face of mounting realities including his parents' divorce,life with a hostile and irrational stepfather, and family illness and loss. The transformation is mirrored by the evolution of his surroundings from the Sylvanian wonderland of suburban Houston with its patches of dense forest and bayous to the industrialized and citified Houston of the oil boom. This book manages to be intimate and completely! honest without being sentimental or self-indulgent. One of the finest examples of memoir I've ever read.

Rating:
Summary: An exciting journey to self-knowledge with love as compass
Review: Michael Sledge takes the reader on an intimate journey from childhood to adulthood. Along the way, we see the transformation of his mother from a mythical Mary Poppins to a woman of flesh-and-blood characterized by her own frailties. All along the way, however, we are reminded of the great capacity for love in the most powerful of human relationships (Mother and Son) and its ability to give life to both parties over and over again. In the author we meet a boy who has inherited his mother's passion for life and struggles to maintain his idyllic view of the world in the face of mounting realities including his parents' divorce,life with a hostile and irrational stepfather, and family illness and loss. The transformation is mirrored by the evolution of his surroundings from the Sylvanian wonderland of suburban Houston with its patches of dense forest and bayous to the industrialized and citified Houston of the oil boom. This book manages to be intimate and completely! honest without being sentimental or self-indulgent. One of the finest examples of memoir I've ever read.