Customer Reviews

Her Last Death: A Memoir

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It's been a long time since a personal memoir stayed with me for so long after I turned the last page.

Sonnenberg is living proof that money and privilege don't insure happiness ... or even a glimpse at normalcy.

Sonnenberg's grandfather was one of New York City's most successful publicity machines. Her father was somewhat of a literary star, especially during the 1960s. He grew up in one of the city's most recognizable mansions, The Fish House, at 19 Gramercy Park South. He had a fling with Susanna's mother when she was 15, got her pregnant and married her when she was 16.

Sonnenberg's maternal roots are just as impressive, even though she changes their names, so we can't Google them for more background. Her maternal grandfather was a successful musician and wrote tunes for the movies. Her grandmother could have been Carole Lombard's twin. After the two divorced, 'Patsy,' as Sonneberg calls her, had houses in Barbados, London and Monte Carlo.

Forget Joan Crawford and the wire hangers. 'Daphne' was addicted to drugs, sex and rock 'n rollers. If Sonnenberg has written the truth, it's a wonder Daphne survived her addiction to morphine, cocaine, Valium and percodan, not to mention her binge drinking. She was hospitalized for mental meltdowns on numerous occasions. She taught Sonnenberg how to give her drugs with needles. When Sonnenberg was 12, Daphne gave the child cocaine, telling her it was important for her to know the difference between quality cocaine and powder that had been "cut," or watered down. Daphne seduced her daughter's boyfriends. She had sex on Daphne's bed at boarding school. She punched her daughter in the stomach, a lot.

And, there was really no one to protect the young, sensitive girl from the maniac that had given her life.

How Sonnenberg ever found her way through the mania to a healthy relationship is a miracle. Now living in Missoula, Montana, with a loving husband and two young boys, she has written a glorious accounting of her time in hell. Her ability to tell her story with a precision-like insight is true testament to the triumph of the human spirit.

Warning: This book is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. Daphne's drug use is just the tip of the iceberg. Until her marriage, Sonnenberg used her sexuality to get what she wanted and to fill the gaping holes in her heart. She was promiscuous. It's a wonder she wasn't an alcoholic or druggie to boot.

I suspect this book will garner a lot of attention come awards season and I'm sure Hollywood will scarf it up, even if the screenplay would have to be rated X.

This is the most courageous and riveting memoir I've ever read. The author unflinchingly recounts the details of her traumatic and frequently disturbing upbringing. She allows us to see into the life of a financially privileged, yet emotionally and physically abusive family where anything goes. She bravely shares her own darkest moments in her journey to free herself from the pattern of histrionic behavior that has been the norm for her entire life. It is a triumphant and inspiring story of a chronically codependent mother-daughter relationship. An absolute must-read.

I love memoirs and I found Her last Death to be hard to leave when I had to go to work, but I have a few quibbles.

The book started off wrongly in the preface where the author, Susannah Sonnenberg, warns us that the only "real" character in the book is her; everyone else has a pseudonym and people and events may be composites of characters and situations. That is not the definition of a memoir, in my opinion. Rather, I felt I was reading fiction into which the author had inserted herself. Therefore, I have no idea if what she wrote actually happened as described or if the people she wrote about, including most of all, her mother and sister and her wealthy grandparents, really existed. A memoir, at least since James Frey got reamed out by Oprah, is about real people and real occurrences.

I also must admit I didn't like almost all of the people described in the book, including the author most of the time. Her husband remains a complete enigma (leading me to believe he's boringly normal) but that he doesn't seem to buy into her dramas says a lot about him. Her father has some interesting qualities and more so as his neurological disease has progressed. The mother, of course, is singularly distasteful in almost every aspect and it seems she has similarly doomed the younger sister. Her story is one of rampant, unrepentant child sexual abuse, passive aggressiveness, and deceit intended for no other purpose than to hurt her children in ways I haven't seen anywhere before. Everything she did was so inappropriately perfused with sexuality in dangerous and unspeakable ways. Should the author rear her two sons to be honest, decent, responsible, and loving adults, that will be a monumental credit to her ability to overcome her dreadful family.

If readers discount the story and the people populating it as mostly fictionalized, then they will experience a well-written, fast-moving "novel" about a quite unsettling family they should never hope to meet.

I cannot join the rhapsody of praise critics have lavished on Susanna Sonnenberg's memoir, "Her Last Death." Initially I felt pity for the author, but soon enough, compassion changed to contempt, engagement became indifference. Sonnenberg is the daughter of enormously wealthy and spiritually bankrupt parents, and her youth was spent in astonishing material affluence. As if to compensate for the surfeit of money surrounding Susanna, her parents proved to be incompetent, emotionally distant and cruel, especially her mother, who may well lay claim to have her own room in the Hall of Fame for liars. "Her Last Death" is a voyeuristic, embarrassing description of abuse; lacking universal lessons, the memoir abounds with grimy, disheartening revelations

The premise of the memoir is an answer to a question: Why does a daughter refuse to fly from her Montana home to be at the bedside of her comatose mother? For the next 250 pages, Ms. Sonnenberg gives us, in excruciating detail, the reason for her decision. We learn that her mother, Daphne, is a pathological liar and a sex maniac. Disdainful of any personal boundaries that may separate her from her daughter, Daphne attempts to indoctrinate her young daughter into a world of hedonism where indiscriminate sexual encounters and casual use of addictive drugs abound..

Given this endless catalogue of abuse, it is paradoxical that Sonnenberg never figures out how to stop her own self-absorption. Both mother and daughter are self-absorbed and limited people; their addiction to conspicuous consumption distances themselves not only from each other, but from the real world. Since the Sonnenberg family possesses extraordinary wealth, it is often difficult for readers to respond sympathetically to Susanna's admission admission that she has never had to wait in a line in her life until she has reached adulthood?

The only value this overwrought memoir has is its painful realizations that abusive parents cripple their children's ability to become parents in their own right. Children with parents who have no boundaries become adults who doubt their own abilities to function as mothers or fathers. Susanna is panic stricken after giving birth to her first son, and her self-doubt rings true. Of all the pernicious influences Daphne had on Susanna, it is her residual mistrust of self that is most horrifying.

An adult so dwarfed by wealth that she doesn't understand the mechanics of making a grilled cheese sandwich is a severely limited human being, a person with whom most readers cannot identify. Human anguish abounds in this tell-all memoir, but it is tinctured by an environment in which only the super-rich live. When the mother gloats over successfully shoplifting toiletries, I hoped that she would have been arrested, tried and convicted. Instead, the punishment the mother deserves has been reserved for Sonnenberg's readers.

From the first sentence I was hooked, and I spent the next many hours immersed in a world that is alternatingly horrifying, entrancing, illuminating, and darker than night--much like Daphne, the author's mother and the subject of this book. In the hands of a less accomplished writer, "Her Last Death" could have been a sensationalistic, simplistic shocker, but the prose is so gorgeous and Sonnenberg's control over the material so complete, the book is simply irresistible. One can only hope that this isn't "her last book."

What kind of daughter gets the most dreaded of all phone calls --- "Your mother's been in an accident, she's probably going to die" --- and doesn't drop everything to rush to mom's bedside?

In this case, a smart one.

Eternal vigilance, someone said, is the price you pay for not turning into your parents. And that's for garden-variety neurotic folk like you and me. For the kids of parents who should never have become parents --- the hard core druggies, the passionate narcissists, the spoiled rotten rich --- it's much harder. To hear the stories those kids tell is to wonder: Why didn't you self-destruct?

Of these horror stories, Susanna Sonnenberg's is a stunner. "It's official --- the worst mother, ever," one reviewer wrote, and I don't disagree. Susanna's mother abuses drugs so casually she mixes them with tap water before injecting her thigh, encourages her single-digit-aged daughter to masturbate, seduces (or pretends to) her kid's boyfriends. That she shamelessly drops names and makes her sick self the center of every conversation --- in this family, that's not even a misdemeanor.

The father's no peach, either. He becomes afflicted with multiple sclerosis, which buys him some slack later on, but he's already done his share of damage. Just one example: How do you justify taking your grade-school daughter to the movies and blaming her for doing nothing when a guy gropes her?

I say it all the time: We become what we behold. It doesn't matter what our parents tell us, we imprint who and what they are. So what are the odds that Susanna's teen years are about school and extra-curricular activities and making sure she gets into a good college?

Good guess.

Readers who don't like to read about lovemaking-without-love should stay clear of this book, because there's a ton of it here. And not just the mother. Susanna gets off to what, in her family, is a slow start, but by 16 she's doing it with her English teacher, and in her early 20s, she sleeps with anyone who crosses her path.

So, you ask, what's in this squalor for me?

First, redemption. Many of us believe that people don't change. But the last half of "Her Last Death" chronicles Susanna Sonnenberg's path from talented loser to wife and mother of two. It's not a pretty story --- there's backsliding galore --- but it's credible, and moving, and surely an inspiration to anyone who's lost and thinks there's no way out of the hole.

And then there's the writing. Susanna Sonnenberg puts you in the room and keeps you in the room. And something harder: She doesn't step back and judge. Was her mother bipolar? Reads like it. But Sonnenberg is too good a writer to turn her book into a tract about a woman who needed help and a family and culture that didn't know enough to provide it. And because she doesn't judge, we never catch a break. We're in it with her, begging her not to get engaged to the gambler who doesn't love her, willing her to break up with the chilly and controlling Brit, praying that she doesn't lose her first good relationship by confessing a meaningless lesbian affair.

Funny thing. Susanna Sonnenberg's grandfather --- the source of the money that started the chain of indulgence and sickness --- was Benjamin Sonnenberg, who more or less invented public relations in America. He commanded huge fees for expert spin; you could say that deception was the family business. Generations later, his granddaughter has told her story as harsh truth. Good for her.

Having had a wife who suffered sexual abuse from a stepfather as child, I could not stop reading this book from the first chapter. It hit too close to home. The author's prose is crisp, sharp, and vivid, but therein may lie the rub. I could never quite get a feel for how this insane mother truly affected her emotions and world view. She writes almost in a distant and third person non-emotional state, as if recording this had happened to another person. Sure, she describes how her mother's pathological behavior affected her relationships with lovers and children, but for me it rang hollow. I still could not quite feel or figure how, or who, Susie is, or was. I kept reading, fully engrossed, unable to stop, like watching a car or train wreck.

Finally, we are still left to wonder where or when her mother really does die, so the title is a bit misleading, but does work to draw one into the web of dysfunctional childhoods. For me, I would have liked a little more meat and substance.

Susanna Sonnenberg led a luxurious life as a child of privilege. When she was three years old, Bob Dylan lived next door. Susanna's parents divorced, and she moved to a deluxe New York hotel with mother Daphne and sister Penelope. Daphne drove a taxi, often bringing along her daughters in order to get bigger tips from fares. She began to date, was charismatic and popular, and had fabulous stories to tell, some of which were probably true.

Daphne took six-year-old Susanna, along with Penelope, on a trip across the country. Along the way, she confided that she had stolen coats, sleeping bags and jewelry for their trip. She also told Susanna that she had leukemia and that she only had a few months to live. Susanna, horrified and sad, asked what would become of herself and Penelope after Daphne died. Daphne brushed off the question, telling her daughter that there was a good side to being terminal --- such as being able to charge anything on credit cards but never having to deal with the bills.

When the trio returned to New York, Daphne informed Susanna that she didn't have leukemia after all; the hospital had mixed up patient charts. This just proved to be one of many of Daphne's uncountable, manipulative falsehoods. Meanwhile, Daphne seduces a married neighbor, Colin, but takes the girls on a vacation with Colin's best friend, Hugh.

Although Susanna yearns to be closer to her father, Nat, he is emotionally distant with his daughters, suggesting they call him by his first name. Nat suffers the early stages of multiple sclerosis but manages to take the girls to cultural events. At one point, Susanna accompanies him to see Orson Welles films. He sternly tells his daughter not to speak until the movie has ended. As Nat watches the film, a man sits by Susanna, stroking her thigh. Afterward, when Susanna reveals to her father what happened, he simply tells her what to say next time: "Take your hands off me!" Nat considers the problem solved, but Susanna is sad that he doesn't act outraged or try to find her molester.

As Susanna grows older, her mother's erratic behavior escalates. She abuses Susanna physically and emotionally, but these episodes are followed by interludes of irresistible magnetic charm. Yet Susanna grows wary and then warier as her mother seduces her boyfriend, abuses drugs and constantly lies. Susanna's own behavior, particularly with men, begins to mirror her mother's. If "as the twig is bent, so grows the tree" is a true saying, then how can Susanna ever learn to find honest love and live an honorable life?

HER LAST DEATH is in many ways an unsettling read, partly because of the matter-of-fact tone in which Sonnenberg relates her mother's manipulation and abuses. It is also a page-turner, as the reader hopes for resolution, healing and resurrection for the author, who leaves us with a satisfying, not overly neat, conclusion.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon [...]

I like to purchase books about people that have gone through hard times, created their own path, and found success. I give these books to children I know in bad home situations, as proof that life can get better. I bought this book, as from the description, it seemed to fit the bill.

The first half I was convinced Susana had it bad, her mother a cocaine addict and her father a bit distant. The most intriguing (*spoiler alert*) bit was her affair with her teacher. However, Susana doesn't seem upset by the affair at all, which I think she should have been especially looking back on it, and more so a willing participant in all of it. She talks about her times with her mother "all to herself" and how she liked to get a certain reaction from her. Although there was drug use surrounding her at times I would not call her mother a junkie, she was not abused, she did not go without, she was still loved all be it in her mother's own way. Her father may have been a bit distant, but he was in her life, she knew him and loved him and he did the same. I started to realize that it was not the drug use or the nontraditional views of sex her mother had that bothered Susana the most, but that she had to "share her" and found her embarrassing later in life. Who hasn't had an embarrassing parent? The fact that she had two parents that did care about her, an education, food in her belly, clothes on her back, a roof over her head; just isn't enough when in reality that is far more than most of the children that write memoirs of this type have.

It doesn't seem that Susanna is that worried about how eccentric her mother looks to other people until she starts seeing Christopher, who the first few chapters about him seem that she is trying to convince the reader of how dull, unoriginal, and boring he is. Then shortly into these chapters, Susanna wants to be like him and is upset that her mother doesn't change to fit her constantly changing wants and needs of who she wants her to be.

I'm having a hard time getting through this book knowing that Susana doesn't go to see her mother before she dies. I wanted to feel for her, but right now the only thing I'm feeling is that she has a very twisted view of what a mother/daughter relationship is and although hers was nontraditional, no one's is perfect.

I finally did push through the last chapters, wanting an answer for her decision, but not getting one. Susana pulls her mother back into her life when she wants her, than tosses her aside when she doesn't. She plays the victim, justifying her decisions, never once giving much regard to marriages she destroyed when she talks of her sexual encounters with married men, and somehow laying on the blame back on her mother. Her mother was too forward with sex, but what about families that say it is a mortal sin? That wrap sex in fear making their children ashamed of their own bodies, is that much better? Yes, she wanted a "normal" life, but life isn't normal, and this memoir doesn't make her courageous. It would have been courageous to admit these things to her straight laced Minnesota friends, but writing it all down for the world to see seems more attention-seeking then courageous.

I will not pass this book on. Letting people read this who actually are courageous, who have been left in abandoned buildings by their junkie mothers, who have never known their father...just seems mean. Susana had a troubled a childhood, but she had a lot more happiness than some will ever know and hailing her as a hero for telling her story seems like a slap to the face of those who really are.

Its hard to call a book like this a good book, or to even say that I enjoyed it. I would recommend it though, to anyone who can appreciate a candid life story.

I always feel like a lot can be learned about people from memoirs like this. Susanna Sonnenberg provides an intimate look into the lives of the people who shaped her.

Her mother, a whirlwind woman with a drug habit and an unending sex drive. A woman that likes to pretend she is dying. She loves to be the center of attention, at the cost of everyone around her if necessary.

Her father, a genius writer that expects his toddler to appreciate the classics and berates her for not always taking the intellectual path. When she is older he discounts every accomplishment she makes. As a result, Susanna finds herself always seeking male approval, and all too frequently in the arms of her married english teachers.

Susanna doesn't manage to avoid partaking in risky behaviors, she is a product of her raise. When she starts to realize the pattern she is creating, endless partners and a path of self destruction, she winds up making a big change.

Despite the cards being heavily stacked against our author, she managed to find a normal, and happy life, in a place she never would have predicted she could end up in.