Making An Exit: A Mother-Daughter Drama With Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Elinor Fuchs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0786276932 | ISBN-13: 978-0786276936 | Edition: 1

At a time when such things were rare, Elinor Fuchs's mother, Lil, escaped a miserable marriage and launched a career that led her from the Midwest to Washington, D.C. She left Elinor to be raised by grandparents, and eventually to despise her mother's values and keep her distance. Making an Exit is the moving account of what happened afterward - the unexpected love story of a career-driven mother, a once-resentful daughter, and a ten-year battle with Alzheimer's.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fuchs celebrates the richness and folly of life and language in this loving and often funny tribute to her nonconformist mother, Lillian Kessler. Born in 1908, Kessler attempted to take the well-paved path of a proper lady twice, first by attending Radcliffe and then by marrying an accomplished, high-society violinist. But she eventually forged her own way, getting divorced, leading WPA projects, entertaining suitors and business associates at lavish parties and ambitiously building the Kessler Corp., selling "spare parts"—all while first abandoning, then raising her daughter on her own. Displaced by her mother's self-important life, Fuchs didn't become a willing participant in this drama until disaster struck Kessler: first a heart attack and then Alzheimer's. Fuchs writes of navigating the heartbreaking vagaries of this debilitating disease together with her uncle and the caregivers at Kessler's assisted-living facility and, later, Kessler's nursing home, and how she found sympathy for her mother as she sought meaning in the mellifluous babble of their absurd conversations. Fuchs, a Yale School of Drama professor, places excerpts of these dialogues, scriptlike, between chapters as interludes that set the next scene and illuminate the inane intelligence of the demented mind. Never mawkish, this is a tender tale of an idiosyncratic, independent woman and her daughter's reluctant love.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"How these women touched me! Driven and real, Making an Exit hurtles toward its truths with uncommon feeling and honesty."
-- Gish Jen, author of The Love Wife

"Unflinchingly honest, open-hearted, and funny, this is a work of passionate intelligence and deep humanity."
-- Joyce Antler, author of The Journey Home

“Fuchs’ mother is larger than life in both her salad days and in her days of word salad. And Making an Exit overflows with life – its sorrows and surprises, its follies and joys.”
-- Anne Basting, Director of the Center on Age and Community, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

“Making an Exit is a rare and wonderful rollercoaster of a book, tender and touching, hilarious and high-spirited – a moving portrait of a daughter and mother that is fiercely intelligent, ineffably sad, and, finally, transcendent.”
-- Kathleen Woodward, author of Aging and its Discontents

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 293 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press; 1 edition (June 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786276932
• ISBN-13: 978-0786276936
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,162,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars surprisingly funny as well as moving, March 7, 2005

By 

rose90 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making an Exit: A Mother-Daughter Drama with Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter (Hardcover)

Both Lil's story and the story of her daughter Elinor (the author/narrator) are enthralling. This is a funny, fast-paced, dramatic book, which captures deep emotions (the pain of a parent's illness, the growing love between mother and daughter) yet is always entertaining. A provocative meditation on love, loss, and memory, but also a page-turner.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like reading a well-written script, part drama and part comedy., July 19, 2005

By 

Daniel Kuhn "Author of Alzheimer's Early Stag... (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Making an Exit: A Mother-Daughter Drama with Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter (Hardcover)

Elinor Fuchs writes of navigating the long-distance caregiver role, first with the help of part-time paid caregivers and then live-in caregivers. Care eventually moves to an assisted living facility and finally a nursing home. Fuchs marks each transition with mixed feelings over meeting her mother's dependency needs while trying to preserve her independence. Fortunately, her loving uncle was available to make decisions with her until his own death. Fuchs' intelligence, good humor, and compassion enable her to enjoy her mother in spite of her limitations. She begins to reframe the meaning of her mother's fractured language: "I see Lil not only as a `patient' and `sick.' But as an artist, spinning poetry of a private world, and I began to carry a little tape recorder to catch these exchanges." As a result, each chapter of the book begins with an excerpt that reveals their playful, wacky, and sometimes profound conversations. This memoir is filled with funny anecdotes that show how her mother retained her essential self well throughout the disease.

This book is a joy to read. More than a narrative about aging and loss, it is a story of love's triumph. "The last ten years," writes Fuchs, "they were our best." If only more family caregivers in the midst of such adversity could grasp such an unexpected gift.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treat and a tonic..., April 10, 2005

By 

M. Walsh "book glutton" (CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Making an Exit: A Mother-Daughter Drama with Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book. It's about a downer subject-Alzheimer's---but manages to be funny, inspiring, hopeful and informative about the process of AD. Other reviewers are right---it is a page turner.

So what an achievement---an upbeat, engrossing book about a human tragedy. I've read a lot of first person accounts about the dementia of a relative and this is the best. It should become a classic. And now the author Fuchs, who teaches at the Yale School of Drama, should make a play of this.