City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Fierce Attachments, A Memoir

eng

non fiction

Fierce Attachments

dictionaries

A Memoir

Vivian Gornick's relationship with her mother is difficult. At the age of forty-five, she regularly meets her mother for strolls along the streets of Manhattan. Occasionally they'll hit a pleasant stride <U+0150> fondly recalling a shared nostalgia or chuckling over a mutual disgust <U+0150> but most often their walks are tinged with contempt, irritation, and rages so white hot her mother will stop strangers on the street and say, <U+0145>This is my daughter. She hates me'.Weaving between their tempestuous present-day jaunts and the author's memories of the past, Gornick traces her lifelong struggle for independence from her mother <U+0150> from growing up in a blue-collar tenement house in the Bronx in the 1940s, to newlywed grad student, to established journalist <U+0150> only to discover the many ways in which she is (and always has been) her mother's daughter.Fierce Attachments is a searingly honest and intimate memoir about coming of age in a big city, and the perpetual bonds that keep us forever linked to our family.<U+0145>Admired, rightly, as <U+0147>timeless" and <U+0147>classic" . . . Fierce Attachments demands honour as the work of a breathtaking technician.' <U+0150> Jonathan Lethem<U+0145>A fine, unflinchingly honest book . . . The story of an abiding, difficult love, full of grace and fire.' <U+0150> New York Times<U+0145>Brimming with life . . . Fierce Attachments is a work of emotional cartography, charting influences and mapping out a proximate territory of the Self.' <U+0150> Los Angeles Times<U+0145>One hesitates to traffic in such stock reviewer's adjectives as <U+0147>brilliant", <U+0147>an American classic", but there are only so many words with which to say how very good this book is.' <U+0150> Washington Post

Intro -- Praise -- Title Page -- Contents -- Fierce Attachments -- Daunt Books -- About the Author -- Also by Vivian Gornick -- Copyright