Customer Reviews

Hold Me Close, Let Me Go: A Mother, a Daughter and an Adolescence Survived

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Hold Me Close, Let Me Go by Adair Lara is a wonderful, terrible, funny, devastating book that took me by surprise and held me in thrall from the first page. I didn't mean to read it. As a 63 year old childless gay man, I had little investment in a book (regretfully) being marketed as a mother-daughter self-help manual. But since I read only nonfiction, when browsing I'll pick up books on any subject, just to see how well the author writes, and so it was with Lara's book. Also, I was struck by the photo on the cover. Anyway I picked it up, began to read, then found I had to buy it. Gay, straight, childless, parent, this book is a staggering read for anyone who loves stories and admires those who can get out of the way and tell them true, even when artful lies are used. Though teenage/family dysfunction is at the center of Hold Me Close, Lara writes of universal experience--one of family, friends, and wrestling demons to the ground to find grace. Suddenly, I am in love with Adair Lara, though my partner of 26 years is not threatened. Read this book. You will be better for it.

I don't think I have ever read a memoir that read more like a novel. I kept checking the cover to make sure. It's honest and very stirring, especially if you have ever raised a child to reach these years. I hated to see it end but I known the mom was grateful for some closure. This is well worth your time. I laughed and nodded my head many times. Sometimes in simple amazement and sometimes in agreement.

My teenage daughter doesn't just push my buttons - she jams her finger on them and doesn't take them off for a long time! So I have to say I enjoyed (in a perverse way) reading the struggles another Mom had with her teenage daughter. I read it in two sittings and my whole attitude toward my teen has changed. If Adair and her daughter can come through what they had to overcome and still be friends ... there is hope for all of us. Thanks, Adair, for letting me know that I am not alone and that there is light at the end of the teenage tunnel.

In this moving memoir of a particularly bad adolescence, popular San Francisco columnist Adair Lara honestly -- and sometimes brutally -- tells the story of her daughter Morgan's path from angry teenager to responsible adult.

I think books like these should be required reading for parents for two reasons: (1) they tell us what to expect and (2) they let us know we are not alone in our struggle to raise our children with some sense of responsiblity and maturity.

Three cheers for Adair Lara...she's shed light on a subject that needs more discussion. And also, kudos to Morgan, who made it through.

This was a very frustrating book to read. The author seems completely disconnected from how her choices led to the problems she had with her teenage daughter. Starting with her decision as the mother of two pre-schoolers that she didn't want to be married to their dad anymore. Couldn't she have figured that out a few years earlier?

Next she applauded her pre-teens daughter challenging authority by way of dress, school behavior, etc. She thought it was whimisical that her daughter decorated her bedroom with condoms.
So then when her daughter later defies her, becomes sexually active at a young age, and is generally self-centered and thoughtless, Lara cannot see the connection between this behaviour and her own poor parenting skills.

And most annoying of all, is Lara's habit of dumping her daughter to live with family and friends, then becoming enraged when they criticize Morgan. I can't believe that one friend (Suzanne?) actually wanted Morgan to babysit her kids. I wouldn't have allowed a girl with Morgan's problems unsupervised access to any child.

Over and over again, Lara seems incapable of understanding the relation between how she raised her daughter and the acting out that her daugher emgaged in.

And of course, the irony of the "upbeat" ending. A degree from UC Santa Cruz in philosophy does not provide a graduate with too many career options. Let's see maybe waitressing...

And lastly, I find it offensive that Lara mined her daughter's troubles for her literary endeavors. What an invasion of her daughter's privacy! We all act out during adolescence, but most of us don't have parents who will exploit our misadventures for teir own purposes. I think that some of Morgan's acting out may have been because of the undesired exposure from her Mother's newspaper column.

The only good thing about this book, I think, is that it can serve as a model of things to avoid in parenting. Don't be overly permissive and don't ignore the warning signs.

A daugther spirals out of control. Yet mom is busy with her new husband (what a gem he is), shuts her daughter out of her home office and generally puts her head in the sand--thinking that simply worrying about her daughter means she is being a mother. A mother stands up and tries to do what is right-takes action and does something.

It is very annoying to read how this mother excuses her own (and her daughters behavior) without EVER learning a thing. Whatever Morgan does, mom grounds her, sends her packing to another relative-does everything but mothers this girl. I would be VERY interested in a book by Morgan--"How I pulled myself out of a terrible time in spite of my mother"

Adair Lara's honest and touching account of her rebellious daughter's adolescence is both heartfelt and funny. She lets us know what it's like to live with - and love - a complex and often difficult child. And she shows us how that love can redeem them both. I loved every page of this warm, witty book that proves that love is stronger than even adolescence.

I loved this book. I felt as if the author and I were close friends. Lara tells the truth--the funny, sad, scarey, touching truth--about what she went through raising a teenager. It's a gem!

I absolutely loved this book. I bought it a few days ago and haven't been able to put it down. I loved Adair Lara's honesty. I felt that she and Morgan had become my friends. I have two teenage sons and this book touched me. I loved Morgan's spirit and felt Adair's love and fear for her. I love the final message that through it all, the consistent love that Morgan felt from her mom pulled her through. Basically we all make mistakes but if we keep on trying, our kids will feel our love for them. I am so sad that I am through with this book, I miss Morgan and Adair.

They say to write a good memoir, you must write as if everyone is already dead. Man, Adair Lara knows how to follow that advice - and apparently is still on good terms with everyone in this book. Stupidly shelvedin parenting sections, bookstores should better market this as memoir. No one, having read it, would take it for a parenting manual. It's one woman's story of her difficulties, triumphs, and failures, challenges and sacrifices, doubts and agonies of blundering her way through parenting one of god's most difficult and brilliant (always a dangerous combination) teenage girls.
Also, as Lara is primarily a humor writer, it's screamingly funny, and laugh you will, when you're not holding your breath to see what new devilment Morgan (the daughter) will get up to next. I think the most profound lesson a parent would get from this book is that if you love your kids and let them know it, you'll all probably survive those difficult transitional years.