Mommy Dressing : A love story, after a fashion

Rating:
Summary: What's love got to do with it?
Review: I just finished reading this book after more than a year of having it kick around on my "Must Read" list, and I was alternately disappointed and impressed. For the first half of the work, Gould's prose reads more like the name-dropping, trivia-hopping chatter of a slightly annoying party guest. I was overwhelmed and lost in a swarm of odds-and-ends that needed to be swept away in order to arrive at any understanding of what she was saying about her complex and distant mother. Gould also seems also to retain a bitterness about her "motherless" childhood which, while reassuring to those of us who still haven't yet grown beyond the slights occasioned by our own mothers, became increasingly more oppressive as the work flowed toward its final pages. However, I admire Gould for showing us the mother that she knew, and not the mother she wishes she had. Her memories are stitched together haphazardly, defying the bounds of chronology, and because of this, they approach reality more startlingly than many highly-polished memoirs. In a departure from the heavy-handed prose in the intial pages, the throwaway statements that abound in the final chapters of the work take on more meaning than the bulk of the more descriptive passages--perhaps appropriately, considering Copeland's throwaway style of mothering. Through these simple, uncluttered phrases, the book becomes beautiful and worth the year-long wait.

Rating:
Summary: What's love got to do with it?
Review: I just finished reading this book after more than a year of having it kick around on my "Must Read" list, and I was alternately disappointed and impressed. For the first half of the work, Gould's prose reads more like the name-dropping, trivia-hopping chatter of a slightly annoying party guest. I was overwhelmed and lost in a swarm of odds-and-ends that needed to be swept away in order to arrive at any understanding of what she was saying about her complex and distant mother. Gould also seems also to retain a bitterness about her "motherless" childhood which, while reassuring to those of us who still haven't yet grown beyond the slights occasioned by our own mothers, became increasingly more oppressive as the work flowed toward its final pages. However, I admire Gould for showing us the mother that she knew, and not the mother she wishes she had. Her memories are stitched together haphazardly, defying the bounds of chronology, and because of this, they approach reality more startlingly than many highly-polished memoirs. In a departure from the heavy-handed prose in the intial pages, the throwaway statements that abound in the final chapters of the work take on more meaning than the bulk of the more descriptive passages--perhaps appropriately, considering Copeland's throwaway style of mothering. Through these simple, uncluttered phrases, the book becomes beautiful and worth the year-long wait.

Rating:
Summary: Touching, but superficial
Review: I was so looking orward to this book, but was sadly disappointed with it. The author had emotionally charged and complex family relationships. She related heart-wrenching accounts of her family history. Yet the emotional foundation for those stories was poorly developed. The book would have ben enthralling if the author had helped me to know her characters more. Instead it left me a bit flat.

Rating:
Summary: Touching, but superficial
Review: I was so looking orward to this book, but was sadly disappointed with it. The author had emotionally charged and complex family relationships. She related heart-wrenching accounts of her family history. Yet the emotional foundation for those stories was poorly developed. The book would have ben enthralling if the author had helped me to know her characters more. Instead it left me a bit flat.

Rating:
Summary: Further proof that real life is the stuff of novels
Review: Lois Gould's biography of her mother, and in no small part her own autobiography, is written with the novelist's touch. The prose is spare but evocative; the observations through a child's eyes clear but heartbreaking. It's a beautiful "read" although a sad, sad story. Lois Gould, however, bears no malice and allows us to judge Jo Copeland, which we do ultimately with compassion.

Rating:
Summary: Mommie Dressing
Review: This was a Christmas present last year that I just re-read and loved even more for the texture of Lois Gould's rarified existence and the terror and mystery of her mother's unbelievable life. All my favorite topics are combined in this remarkably dry-eyed memoir: fashion, mother-daughter relations, Park Avenue life, how to pack a steamer trunk when going off to the Paris collections...