Customer Reviews

Fierce Attachments: A Memoir

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I read this book 10 plus years ago. It is powerfully honest, beautifully written and particularly memorable. While my own mother had died many years before I read this book it brought her back to me in a most vivid way. No, my mother was not a thing like Ms. Gornicks--indeed my mother was a mild, defering sort--what they had in common, and what I think is at heart the power of this book, is that they were indeed both mothers. Gornick takes us to whatever it is that connects us to our mother/parent--ie a fierce attachment that is near universal. It isn't an easy thing for any of us to face our parents emotionally--feelings toward them--good or bad can tend to the extreme and coming to any rational understanding of that realtionship takes lots of work. This is where this book comes in--Gornick doesn't know our parents--or our struggles--but she describes the fierceness of the connection in her own case honestly and clearly--plus she is a talented wordsmith so she finds just the right language to do it. Anyway, I still love this book--and while I hardly ever read a book twice--(there are way too many I haven't read that I want to get to!) I think I might reread this one--maybe I am drawn to do it because I still miss my mom....whom I never got along with very well but whom I still love/can't shake off...those fierce attachment can't be undone. P.S. plus there are lots of very funny one-liners to be had in this book--what more can you ask for.

The truth is, Gornick could write about the hard bit of cheese left over and I would thill to it. She is a superb stylist and I've read all her books greedily -- precious objects that they are. This book, with its dark and painful attachment to her mother laid bare for us -- and how this attachment has acted upon all her other attempts at attachment -- is kinetic both intellectually and emotionally. She repeatedly tiptoes up to that taboo -- the lack of love that keeps a mother and daughter so intimately entwined -- and lets us stare over the lip of the abyss. I see myself, I see so many women. She is an incredible writer. Every hard won word is worth the wait. A true gem.

Vivian Gornick's book is filled with anecdotal incidents that culminate in a montage like telling of the relationship between herself and her mother. At times, I longed for a more linear style, or a more indepth telling of some of the stories. The end of the book, when Gormick goes into greater detail on her relationships with men in her life, was the part I enjoyed the most. I thought those retellings revealed more about her character than any of the other vignettes. I closed the book still wanting more on the mother daughter relationship, I felt like there were chunks missing. In some ways it was difficult for me to match up the mother Gornick watched as a child, and the mother she went walking with later in life.

Gornick has a real ear for dialogue. This book is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Her writing is glorious. Her perceptions about herself and others are beautifully drawn.

I think one would be hard put to find a reviewer who thinks that Gornick can't write, or that she doesn't have insights that other people feel are incisive and/or applicable to their own lives. I will not dispute any of this; this is an excellently-written book that does a wonderful job exploring the mother/daughter relationship. (Not being either one, I'm somewhat handicapped at commenting on how accurate it is in that area.)

I do think, however, that one should be aware of Gornick's take on what constitutes a memoir. Gornick has written that she views the lives on which a memoir is based to be the "rough draft." She feels that the "memoir" does not need to be held to the strict standards of truefulness that other non-fiction is. (For details on Gronick's take on what a memoir is, please read her piece in Salon: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2003/08/12/memoir_writing/index.html

Personally, I find her explanations unsatisfactory, and her justifications to be rationalizations at best. I do not get enjoyment from the literary technique of an unreliable narrator, no matter how many literary persons find it to be a brilliant technique for exploring whatever (the universality of subjectivity, the unreliability of supposed objectivity, the capricious nature of life, or what have you), and similarly I have trouble with the concept of a "memoir" that is, at it's base, a piece of fiction. Perhaps I am a philistine, but I much prefer something like "The Ladies Auxiliarly," which, while certainly *based* on the author's life, does not pretend in any way to *be* life.

That caveat aside, I *do* honestly think that this is a very good book that many will enjoy. Just caveat emptor, is all.

In a way not much "happens" in this memoir. This is not a book where one is drawn in by plot. Yes, there is a story arch and important events, but what stunned and pleased me most about Gornick's books is the structure. Weaving in and out of conversations with her mother and trips to the past, Gornick expertly brought me deep into her relationship with her mother with all the dysfunctions, tenderness, and harshness of that relationship. By the end of it, I felt I had experienced an epiphany, and sadly its brilliance has made it harder for me to appreciate lesser works.

Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments makes for an exciting and thought-provoking read. Her memoir has a relatable simplicity written through an innovative perspective. She presents her narrative with great analysis and at the same time provides a light-hearted feel.
Every scene is full of life. Unconventionally, Gornick chooses to stray away from chapter divisions--it in no way takes away from the story. The story, in fact, flows better without chapter titles previewing the next memory. Every memory is described extensively passed tangible objects in the room. She goes beyond showing and enables the reader to feel the emotions in the room: "The living room...Here you took a deep breath, held it until you were smothering, then either got out or went under. In the kitchen...You could breathe. You could live" (68-67). The reader has gone past visualizing and is there. Every character and scene developed enhances the story.
The scenes chosen are just important to the memoir as the writing. After Gornick presents an eventful memory, she moves to a walk in the city with her mother. Each walk filled with dialogue reflecting the emotions of the juxtaposed memory. It is clear how the tumultuous relationship with her mother influences her choices and her persona. A great example appears in one of her few heartwarming connections with her mother. She, after a close neighbor Nettie tries to console her, discovers "Mama was where [she] belonged" (71). Gornick accompanies this memory with that of her walk down a sunlit Eighth Avenue where she predicts her mother's defensive reaction before it happens. In a new state of mind, she "[becomes] irritated but [remains] calm. Not falling into a rage..." that she knows she usually would (74).
The memoir lures the reader in. With no dull moments, the reader is left without an opportunity for a bathroom break. The descriptive scenes with relatable reflections put this memoir above the rest. Fierce Attachments is a fierce read.

I found Gornick's book both tragic and insightful. She seems to have become her mother in spite of herself. Gornick also seems to still be hoping and waiting for her mother to magically transform into the mom she's always longed for. The best she's received are a few memorable one-liners when least expected. I felt sorry for Gornick and her somewhat wasted life; I felt she is waiting for the hoped-for changes in her mother to somehow motivate the hoped-for changes in herself. If she would only realize she doesn't have to wait to recover the person she felt she lost so long ago.

This memoir is Gornick doing a hatchet job on her mother. Gornick's mother is a pathological arrogant narcissist who verbally abuses everyone around her, including and especially Gornick. The dimension of it that Gornick seems not to see at all is that she is identical. She abuses her mother and everyone else with the same pointless malice her mother turns on her. It is two hundred pages of two pathological personalities who make themselves and everyone around them miserable. Their constant discourse is arrogance, insult, accusation, blame, and dismissiveness. They never stop bickering bitterly with each other and everyone else. Gornick is as blind to what a loathsome person she is as her mother is. One tires of them quickly.

The proposition that Gornick can write comes from her inserting pompous epigrams at the end of each section. Few of these are original and none are good enough to bear the weight she puts on them.

This is a thoroughly unpleasant book and well worth skipping.

I have nothing to say about the quality of writing in this book, but I found the story very unpleasant, for some reason--probably the chilliness of Vivian Gornick's "marriage." I had to read it in a creative writing course as an example of a memoir, and I disliked it so intensely that after the semester, I disposed of it. Until then, I didn't realizer how hard laminated covers made it for trade paperbacks to burn. From the overall tone of the book, Gornick comes off as the coldest Marxist since Bertolt Brecht.