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Mother of Sorrows

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The book is not a cheery one but it is so beautifully written and memorable that it is one that you will want to share with others after you have read it. The author has pieced together short stories from the last fifteen years which provide a cohesive narrative which reads like a novel. The stories are inner reflections from his life, growing up gay and under the spell of his mother and trying to make connections with his brother and father (who dies when the author is eleven). The brother is gay also but their lives are complete opposites - the author, struggling to come to terms with being gay and living in the closet and his brother, openly gay but living an aimless life filled with drugs and misfortunes. The slim volume is a haunting portrait of a fragile family coming to grips with life, love and loss. It is a book that you won't soon forget.

Author, Richard McCann has written a powerful story of sibling love and motherly adoration. Told in a series of nine snapshots of short stories that briefly peer into the life of one man, Mother of Sorrows effectively blends the past and present, weaving an exotic tapestry of secrets and truths.

The narrator, whose father died when he was eleven, looks back with remembrance and longing at his innocent youth and the strange, intense relationship that he had with his venerated mother and wayward brother. His was a family holding onto the post war innocence, but it was world that he tried to flee in an attempt to create a life of his own.

From an early age the narrator had a penchant for feminine beauty. For him, beauty was because beauty was defined as "feminine" and therefore it became hopelessly confused with his mother. Together with his best friend, Denny, they would spent hours in the gloom of his living room dreaming of fabulous prizes and inspecting the secrets of his mothers dresser: "her satin nightgowns and padded brassieres, her triangular cloisonné earrings, her brooch of enameled butterfly wings."

Fearful of the repercussions from his father and also from Davis, his brother, our narrator abandons the frocks and frills while also eventually abandoning Denny. But he remains besotted with his mother and admits, "the instinct for survival was what my mother and I had in common - no ideals or principles - absolutely nothing."

But it is his relationship with his brother that proves to be the most complex. Davis, fraught with insecurities and hopelessness, is picked up in a public park for gross indecency and struggles with dugs for most of his life. Davis represents those parts of our narrator that were "angry, and desirous, rebellious and sexual and scared."

Perhaps the most memorable moment in the novel occurs when Davis propositions our narrator in a Dupont Circle gay bar. He's initially appalled, but also secretly titillated. And when he leaves Davis standing on the sidewalk alone, he realizes that he's afraid that he would see himself reflected in him, "to glimpse those parts of himself he most feared and this repudiated as belonging only to him."

McCann soars in scenes that are resonant, poetic and exact, and the visions of gay life in the 60s and 70s remain indelibly imprinted in the readers mind. Our embattled protagonist finds himself living a hedonistic existence in France, Spain, and Morocco. It is here that he meets Eduardo, his one true love, whose language has always been touch "with it's own grammar of pleasure and consolation; it's inflections of sorrow."

Our narrator admits that he is trying to tell is and to inform us of his maleness, and to reassure us that he has survived, perhaps without noticeable complexes. This is one of McCann's great strengths, as can meld the past with the present, creating for us a world where the harsh realties of AIDS, alcoholism, drug abuse, and a mother's love are depicted with staggering clarity and without sentimentality.

Mother of Sorrows is a tale of survival and shrewd self-defense, where spouses must deal with the death of their children and siblings must deal with betrayal. In this story, children suffer the consequences of their parents' mismatched love, and mothers and fathers forever skirt around the issue of their sons' sexuality.

The way, in which the narrator's life is affected by the death of his brother and of his lover, and his subsequent battle with HIV, forms a powerful, resonant, and ultimately satisfying end to this very fine novel. Mike Leonard September 05.

Richard McCann's "Mother of Sorrows" is a unique work of autobiographical fiction rich in emotion and illuminated by a painful, polished prose, breathtaking in its clarity.

In ten related stories a nameless narrator recounts episodes from his life that expose his often troubled relations with a brother cast in a role of family black sheep, a doomed father unable to recognize or nurture a gay son with a delicate nature, and an adored, self-absorbed mother of a thousand conflicting temperaments - "Our Mother of the Sighs and Heartaches," "Our Mother of the Mixed Messages," "Our Mother of Apology."

What is most impressive about this slim volume is the author's uncanny ability to cut instantly to the heart of the matter, to the emotional core of a given situation or memory without becoming verbose or maudlin. Not since Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" have we seen writing communicate so much, so succinctly.

Richard McCann has written ten fine short stories here, most of which have been published previously. Having read in a gay anthology the last story here, "The Universe, Concealed," is the reason I bought this slim volume of only 191 pages, proving once again that often less is more. While the stories can be read in any order as each of them stands alone, they are all related, a little like one of those David Hockney photographs where the frames are loosely connected to form one picture. There is the narrator, along with his brother Davis, who is 15 months older than he, and their parents. What makes these tender stories so heart-wrenching is that the family dynamics are completely accurate. I saw glimpses of both my parents and my brother in these characters, the competition between children for their parents' love and approval, the difficulties of growing up, the death of a parent or sibling-- and you don't have to be gay to experience that. The narrator is much taken with his mother, dresses in her clothes as a youngster, wants to spend time only with her, and she says things like he is her best friend, probably not the healthiest attitude for a mother to take. He also wants desperately to please his father but not if it means he has to go fishing with him or search for night crawlers. His father is mildly embarrassed with who his son is. "'He makes me nervous,' I heard my father tell my mother one night as I lay in bed. They were speaking about me."

Other passages-- or stories-- ring true as well. The narrator, like so many of us in the 1980's and 1990's, has attended far too many "gay" funerals. It's almost as each of them must be the most unusual but oh, so relevant: "I know what ritual we'll get when we die, I thought each time I looked around the room at the bunch of us, [the narrator is attending a Positive Immunity workshop] the worried unwell. . . It won't be Kaddish. It won't be a funeral pyre on the Ganges. It'll be a boombox playing 'Je Ne Regrette Rien' in the rear of some Unitarian church hung with rainbow flags, like a gay Knights of Columbus hall." (Surely the funeral director who coined the word "cremains" for ashes will burn in hell for that little monstrosity.) There are literally dozens of paragraphs like these in these stories that go straight to the heart.

The most moving story-- without revealing what happens-- is "My Brother In The Basement." The narrator perceives that his brother Davis is on a collision course but cannot save him. This story, like many of the others, is to be read again and again. I'm reminded of what William Maxwell said about good literature, that we should enjoy it rather than analyze it.

Mr. McCann is is a very fine writer.

"Mother of Sorrows" is a richly woven collection of stories that examines the life of its unknown narrator in relationship to his only brother and parents. The narrator's relationship with his mother is based primarily on his fascination with her glamorous life and a deep seeded need to protect her from anything that doesn't bring her joy. He realizes early in life that his connection with his mother is seen as problematic by his father who is cautiously concerned with his son's feminine ways. The death of his father cements his protective instincts for his mother as she descends into a state of depression. His desire to protect his mother also solidifies his fear of revealing his sexual identify to her. Davis, the narrator's brother becomes withdrawn and deeply saddened by their father's death. Davis's relationship with their father mimics that of his brother's relationship with their mother. As the brothers age, the narrator learns that Davis concealed his sexuality during their adolescence as well. As an adult, Davis reveals his homosexuality to his mother causing ongoing conflicts and further fragmenting an already fragile relationship with the family. Davis finds solace in drugs and eventually dies of an overdose while the narrator takes shelter in the achievements he's made in his academic and professional life.

McCann has assembled in this collection the fear, love and resentment of two brothers coming to terms with their homosexuality in an environment that insists on them suppressing it. The author has constructed the brother's relationship within the context of the biblical brothers whose competition for the respect of the Father turns one against the other. "Mother of Sorrows" is movingly rendered in language that is tender and precise. A torch song coming of age story that many in the life can identify with. Very well done.

McCann writes with a poet's grace--rhythmic phrases, language skating elegantly, leaving a trail of resonant images. This is a story unafraid of ambivalence--an adored mother who steals her son's childhood by making him her audience rather than the reverse; brothers who take separate paths even though they share so much at the cores of their being. The material is endlessly rich, and McCann's unique perspective does it justice: he is a courageous writer, unafraid to examine how one can continue to love despite imperfections, despite pain.

This is in no way simply "a book of stories" or a "memoir." It is stunning. It's in its own class. Quiet, precise, authoritative; this is an entirely dimensioned life. The narrator's need to document and understand, reflected in the meticulous prose, is heart breaking. The brother is heart breaking. The mother is monumental in her self containment -- you can only gawk at her like a piece of sculpture -- you don't judge her, though clearly she wasn't a "good" mother. If tragedy is contributed to by expectation and loss, then she is in her way tragic. But the word tragedy doesn't touch the atmosphere of the life of this narrator. All events are made to feel inevitable.

I became a fan of Richard McCann's writing when I read his story "My Mother's Clothes: The School of Beauty and Shame" in the April 1986 issue of The Atlantic (still on my shelf). Since then I've eagerly read his poetry, essays, and fiction, and am ecstatic to find him at the height (thus far) of his literary genius in his collection of linked stories, MOTHER OF SORROWS. Were it not for the high art he brings to bear on profound human dilemmas--family relations, psychosexuality, societal pressures, desire itself--these stories would be unbearable in their heartbreaking poignancy. Fortunately, he transcends pain with his uncommon sensibility and gorgeous prose, deepening the reader's insight.

Picked this up at Borders and read it to the end nearly without stopping.

A collection that moves through a man's life - and revolves highly around a life of silence, self dissatisfaction and his 'instinct for survival' - remaining mute, going with the flow no matter the personal cost.

The strong images of his mother and as she fades with age contrast his soft background study of his father. His brother, Davis - someone he keeps at arms length even as he aches to hold him close. And the strange attraction that a person can have for someone so close to them - a need for that person that seems to defy logic and law.

The language is beautiful - and the store feels like an answer to the question, "If you had one day to spend with someone who's gone ... who would it be? What would you do?"

Even the close in its lakeside sunset styling leaves off with a man's voice who seems to have found that it is himself that he missed spending any time with while alive.

More appropriate - Family of Sorrows. Richard McCann's book is a masterpiece, plain and simple. The narratives that make up the novel are gorgeous and whimsical, told from the perspective of a very lost boy who grows up trying to relate and connect with his suburban family. And these are memories that we may not have experienced personally, but feel very real: a disappointing comparison of what a sibling has grown up as and become; the realization that a father wanted to impress his son just as much as his son wished to impress his father; a mother who is still retreats into her glory days and becomes more of an idol than a parent. And while at moments, the narrator seems to watch his family life disintegrate in front of him, he grows and prospers almost without realizing it. Simply remarkable.

Mother of Sorrows actually feels more like a memoir than a work a fiction, a trait that many authors strive for all their lives. The young narrator will grow and change from his childhood as will his family. Both he and his brother will turn out to be gay, but will perceive that identity differently. Family members will die, some will be replaced - but the moments described here are relevant and create a narrator that almost any reader can invest in and care about.

Though I finished this book months ago, I've reread the chapter, "The Diarist" numerous times. It's the perfect example of McCann's talent to capture little slices of Americana, then dissect and gut them and make a very specific moment in a character's life feel universal. The narrator, his older brother and their father go on a camping trip - something the youngest son dreads. And he will not be able to impress his father with woodsman skills, is scared of wandering in mulch and of snakes and will get caught with his newest treasure, a bright pink girly diary. There is an overwhelming shame to being the sissy son, not living up to his expectations and having to stand naked while being checked for ticks. It feels like a coming out story gone wrong. But it also reminds you of those car trips with your parents when you were little and you just didn't have anything to say that could impress them.

Mother of Sorrows is a beautiful novel. The prose is gorgeous and the characters are more than sympathetic. It would not surprise me if this ends up on a college syllabus somewhere in the near future.