Not Becoming My Mother

Not Becoming My Mother & Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way By Ruth Reichl

Published April 2009

Ruth Reichl, author of Tender At The Bone and Comfort Me with Apples, leaves the kitchen and enters the attic to discover a box of mememtos that belongs to her mother. On what would be her mother's 100th birthday, Ruth discovers who her mother really was.

Ruth admits early on that her mother is everything she doesn't want to be. She writes of her mother that she is grateful,

Not to be any of the women of her generation, who were unlucky enough to have been born at what seems to me to have been the worst possible time tohave been a middle-class American woman.

She later describes these women as smart, educated, and bored.

The bottom line is both Ruth and her mother, Miriam, were determined for Ruth to have a happy life and to realize her dreams--a luxury Miriam never had. Sadly, Miriam was the happiest in her life after both her mother and her husband were deceased. It was after that, Miriam become the independant and happy woman she always wanted to be. While Ruth doesn't want to be her mother, she does learn a lot from her.

I really can not say enough about this book. I finished it two weeks ago, and have struggled with what to say because I'm not sure anything I say will give the book justice. It's poignant and intelligent. Reichl fills 110 pages beatifully. You can't close this book without asking similiar questions that Reichl asks. I wonder what my mother and grandmother would not only think about this book, but their lives. I wonder what if they feel even an inkling like Miriam.

Long after you close Not Becoming My Mother, you'll be thinking about it--and that is the mark of great writer.

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