Apple And Eve: The First Romantic Comedy (Fun to Read Books Ser.)

Corman, Dick

ISBN 10: 0965574911 / ISBN 13: 9780965574914

Published by Corman Productions, 2006

About this Item

Clean and tight; 215 pages.

Seller Inventory # Q1160

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Apple And Eve: The First Romantic Comedy (Fun to Read Books Ser.)
• Publisher: Corman Productions
• Publication Date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0965574911
• ISBN 13: 9780965574914
• Binding: Softcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

As an adult, National Public Radio foreign correspondent Jacki Lyden has spent her life on the front lines of some of the world?s most dangerous war zones. As a child, she lived in a war zone of a different kind. Her mother, Dolores, suffered from what is now called manic depression; but when Jacki was growing up in a small Midwestern town, Dolores was simply called crazy. In her manic phases, Dolores became Marie Antoinette or the Queen of Sheba, exotically delusional and frightening, yet to young Jacki also transcendent, even inspiring. In time, Jacki grew to accept, even relish, Dolores?s bizarre episodes, marveling at her mother?s creative energy and using it to fuel her own. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and lyrical, this memoir of a mother-daughter relationship is a testimony to obstinate devotion in the face of bewildering illness.

Review

Black humor alternates with almost unbearable pathos in National Public Radio journalist Jacki Lyden's memoir of her mother's manic-depressive episodes. Dreadful though those periodic bouts of madness were, they also gave an unhappy housewife a sense of power and freedom that Lyden couldn't help but admire. "You could say that the life of my imagination began with my mother's visions," she writes, making connections between her profession of "find[ing] things out in places of great secrets" and her struggle to deal with her mother's illness.