Tasha

November 1, 2021

In Where the Children Take Us, CNN anchor Asher celebrates the strength of her first-generation British Nigerian mother, who overcame grief when her husband was killed in a South London car accident to raise four accomplished children, including Oscar-nominated actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (125,000-copy first printing). Multi-award-winning novelist Morton writes about his fierce and irrepressible educator mother, Tasha, from whom he spent a lifetime carefully cushioning himself and who still proves a handful when he must intervene as caregiver as she grows older (75,000-copy first printing). Author of the laugh-out-loud best seller I Miss You When I Blink, self-professed worrywart Philpott practically built a Bomb Shelter to protect her children, then realized during the crisis that unfolded after she found her teenage son unconscious on the floor that she couldn't control everything (100,000-copy first printing). Forever Boy, Swenson's account of raising a son with severe autism, should attract a big audience--and not just because of the subject's importance; Swenson's blog/Facebook page Finding Cooper's Voice has 655,000 followers, and her TODAY-featured video, "The Last Time It's Going To Be Okay," has been viewed over 30 million times (75,000-copy first printing). Expanding on a 2018 USA TODAY story that has had more than 1.5 million page views, Trujillo examines the aftermath of her mother's suicide in Stepping Back from the Ledge, explaining that she had to face deep sorrows in her mother's life and her own.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 3, 2022
The tumultuous bond between a mother and son animates this unstinting yet tender work from novelist Morton (Florence Gordon). When, after years of “successfully her at arm’s length,” Morton’s mother’s worsening dementia forced the two of them to reconnect, Morton aired his frustrations on paper. While he confesses to satirizing his difficult and “voluble Jewish mother” in his novel, The Dylanist, he offers a more nuanced look here at the woman who believed “the people she loved were depriving her.” Morton details how his octogenarian mother, Tasha—once a sharp-witted New Jersey teacher—slowly lost her memory, and how he and his sister struggled to find her care in the process (“We got the names of people who could supposedly guide us... but it turned out that they too were working in the dark”). Despite Tasha’s obstinacy—which only grew as her health declined—Morton describes her antics with measured compassion and gallows humor. Contemplating her last words—“Go to hell.... I hate you”—he crafts an imagined deathbed monologue for Tasha, a single-sentence two-page tour de force that paints her complexities in a humanizing light (“Who I was is just too much for you,” she explains). Part gut-punch comedy, part eulogy, this tribute is dazzling. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson, & Lerner.

February 1, 2022
A son's search for his mother. In 1991, award-winning novelist Morton fictionalized his mother in his first novel, The Dylanist. "Her eccentricities, he admits, "made it hard for me to resist a comic portrayal"--a portrayal that wounded her. Now, after her death, Morton tries to understand how she became the stubborn, overbearing woman who blighted his emotional life. When she was younger, he knew, she had been defiant and determined; at 16, she left home and changed her name from Esther to Tasha, "partly because she liked the sound and partly because it wasn't the name of anyone she knew." Tasha became the first copy girl at the Daily Worker, and she also worked for the United Office and Professional Workers of America, where she met the man she would marry. When he dallied in proposing, she took off to a kibbutz for six months. Married at last and with two young children, she returned to school to earn a graduate degree in education, going on to become an innovative teacher and active school board member. Yet after her husband died suddenly in 1984, she started hoarding--filling her house with the "detritus of her despair"--and sank into depression, the depths of which she confessed to her diary. She felt, Morton realized, "as if she loved us more than any of us loved her." After a stroke and increasing dementia made it impossible for her to care for herself at home, Morton and his sister tried to find support for her only to discover the dearth of resources for the elderly and their vulnerability to abuse. The author's revised portrayal of Tasha is both comic and tender. He recounts frustrating, absurd conversations and discovers, as well, "a life that was devoted to making a contribution. What I see is the life of a woman who gave of herself as fully as she could." His affecting memoir reveals a desperate woman railing against indignities and loneliness and a son powerless to assuage her pain. Melancholy and familial devotion imbue a nuanced, poignant portrait.

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March 1, 2022
At a certain point in most people's lives, the parent and the child switch roles, whether due to disease, injury, or just plain aging. It becomes the child's responsibility to keep parents housed, fed, entertained, and safe, a duty that comes with baggage. Even good relationships are challenged when aging parents insist on driving when they can't really see or living alone despite a series of falls. Morton's mother, Tasha, was a gifted teacher and outspoken supporter of education, but Morton was never sure where he fit into her life. In their final time together, he tries to understand a woman who remains feisty while losing herself to dementia. Morton has an appealing style and shares his challenges (including finding a welcoming nursing home and spying on the home health worker Tasha claims verbally abuses her) with a dose of humor and self-deprecation. He's also honest about his hesitancy to bring his mother into his own home and his own feelings of inadequacy. This is a personal story, but anyone facing the same challenges will be nodding along in agreement.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2022

In his latest work, a son's loving and hard reflection on his mother, novelist Morton (Starting Out in the Evening) does his best to piece together the complex woman his mother was--from the progressive elementary school teacher, to the scatterbrained woman he remembered, to a woman in mental decline after the death of her husband. Morton attempts to see his mother as a "whole," outside of the eccentricities he experienced as her child. His memoir takes in his mother's journal entries, which offered a window into her inner life and revealed secrets Morton hadn't been aware of during his youth. At times, he steps out of his narrative briefly to comment on the state of health care and elder care in the United States and to air his frustrations with how these systems affected him and his mother. Still, Morton's writing is conversational and engaging throughout, offering a vivid portrait of a sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-challenging relationship between a mother and son. VERDICT This is a charming and sad memoir, reminding readers of life's inevitabilities, the beauty of the journey, and the lesson to hold on to those close to them with a fierceness.--Amanda Ray

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.