HER LAST DEATH

Sonnenberg's memoir is filled with traumatic scenes of growing up, owing to her mother's addiction to sex, drugs, and lying. Sonnenberg is quite young, for example, when she finds her mother babbling incoherently, a needle dangling from her arm. After Sonnenberg plunges in the syringe, her mother rejoins, "Thank you, darling." Life is filled with the inappropriate. Sonnenberg's later struggles to adjust to marriage and parenting are recounted in a style that is just as frank. What's missing is a sense of resolution. Despite the author's claims that she has made her own life, choosing estrangement from her mother and sister, her reading projects tones of anger, hurt, and longing that belie her claims. S.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2008]