Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton [Hardcover]

Linda Gray Sexton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1994

The poet's daughter recalls the dramatic mood swings, love affairs, and flagrant sexuality of her mother, as well as the intense and intimate relationship they shared despite the psychological problems that ended in her mother's suicide. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An unsparing account of the anguish and fierce love between Linda Gray Sexton and her brilliant, unstable and ultimately self-destructive mother, Anne Sexton. Anne taught Linda how to write, how to see, how to imagine; and only Linda could have written a book that captures so vividly the intimate details and lingering emotions of their lives together. Searching for Mercy Street speaks to everyone who admires Anne Sexton and to every daughter or son who knows the pain of an imperfect childhood. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"Mother had been living and dying for all of the twenty-one years I had known her," recalls novelist Sexton (Private Acts) of Anne Sexton (1928-1974), the depressive, alcoholic, successfully suicidal poet who perhaps best exemplified the "confessional" literary movement. This memoir was written because the younger Sexton "needed an exorcism." Toward that end, she here evokes both her mother's furiously creative and destructive powers in scenes that include happy literary hobnobbing between the two women and grisly incestuous interludes imposed by the mother (and first related, more briefly and diplomatically, in Diane Middlebrook's controversial biography, Anne Sexton). The younger Sexton tries to sketch a family dynamic that involves several generations, and she tells the story of her own struggle to break free of maternal dominance even while serving as her mother's literary executor. Her book may well be appreciated in the recovery market (the author also describes her own bouts with alcoholism, anxiety and depression). But the often maudlin writing, evasion of detail in preference for melodrama and aversion to the fine points of storytelling are likely to annoy literary readers and devotees of the poet. So is the daughter's unabated drive to justify herself as the abused survivor of an (evidently) greatly misguided parent. Sexton's poetry will continue to astonish readers long after this memoir has vanished. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 307 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (October 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316782076
• ISBN-13: 978-0316782074
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Linda Gray Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1953 and graduated from Harvard University in 1975. She is the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Anne Sexton, and has edited several books of her mother's poetry and a book of her mother's letters, as well as writing a memoir about her life with her mother, "Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back To My Mother, Anne Sexton." "Rituals," "Mirror Images," "Points of Light," and "Private Acts" are her four published and widely read novels. "Points of Light" was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame Special for television.

"Searching for Mercy Street" was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and reviewed to overwhelming critical acclaim. In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani described the book this way: "Powerful and affecting...a candid, often painful, depiction of a daughter's struggles to come to terms with her powerful and emotionally troubled mother. Sexton writes with compelling urgency and candor...a disturbing portrait of a mercurial, impossible and magnetic woman."

Sexton's most recent memoir, "Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide" (Counterpoint Press January 11, 2011) is about her struggle with her own mental illness and the legacy of suicide left to her by her mother, who killed herself when Sexton was twenty-one. Through the help of family, therapy and medicine, Sexton confronted deep-seated issues, outlived her mother and curbed the haunting cycle of suicide she once seemed destined to inherit. The book is a story of triumph.

In pre-publication praise, Erica Jong, author of "Fear of Flying" and "Seducing the Demon," says, "In a country where someone commits suicide every seventeen minutes, where bipolar disorder is rampant and poorly understood, Linda Sexton's beautiful book is a cry for health and sanity. It will bring hope and understanding because it explains the way suicide blights families from generation to generation." Joyce Maynard, author of "Labor Day" and "At Home in the World," writes: "In her new memoir, Linda Sexton completes the full circle opened up with her stunning memoir, "Searching for Mercy Street"--but this time, the woman whose torment she explores is not her mother, but herself, and where her mother's story ended with despair, hers is one of survival. With brutal honesty and total lack of self-pity or sentimentality, Linda Sexton has dared to explore a subject more taboo than almost any other: not only suicide, but what comes after, for survivors. This is a book that will speak to anyone touched by the suicide of someone we knew or loved--as so many of us have been."

All her books are available on Amazon.com in either new or used editions. She lives in California with her husband and her two sons.

Please visit www.lindagraysexton.com to learn more about Linda and her books, connect with other readers, and join the conversation about the issues present in her work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely heart-breaking but written with love., January 1, 1998

By 

Jennifer W. Miller (Eagan, MN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton (Hardcover)

I could not put this book down. Linda Gray Sexton's honesty was enlightening. She portrayed her mother as more than a woman with a mental illness. It is a portrait of a smart intelligent woman struggling to find meaning in her mentally ill life who at times rises above it but eventually succumbs. It is evident that Anne loved her daughters, but showed it in atypical ways. After reading this book, I find myself very interested in the work of Anne Sexton and her life. It gives a fresh and candid glimpse at this amazingly talented, yet tragic woman and a daughter who struggled to make sense out of her mother's love.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Opened My Eyes, April 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton (Hardcover)

I worked with Linda closely for a year when she had small children in the Mid-1980's. I was very touched and disturbed by this book. I found it to the point, but forgiving. I commend Linda for her resiliency and candor. I know that to write this book she had to rediscover many guarded memories. I encourage all to read it. Anne Sexton was a complicated, brilliant artist. Her life was fascinating to read about, especially from her daughter's intimate perpective. The poems that were included helped me to more fully understand the artist and woman through the different stages of her life. I hope Linda writes again.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Go hug your mom after reading this, August 14, 2005

By 

Manola Sommerfeld (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton (Hardcover)

I read long ago the biography of Anne Sexton by Diane Middlebrook, and was very impressed by the tormented life of the poet. I also happened to read one of the novels written by her daughter, Linda Gray Sexton, "Points of Light", which I did not like all that much. So I had (I thought) an idea of who Linda was, both through the biography and her novel.

I was wrong. Searching for Mercy Street is truly what the subtitle claims: "A journey back to my mother". It gets so personal it is embarrassing at times. Linda goes into a lot of detail as to why she revealed things that you would never want anybody outside of your family to know, and it makes sense, and yet it doesn't. I have never read a better account of life with another person. It is not 100% chronological, but it is rich in detail and clarity. I read it with the anticipation I have sometimes when reading a very interesting novel.

Long time ago a friend said: "Your parents are probably the only people that you may love even if you don't like them". I have thought about that comment quite a bit over the years. Linda was conflicted over the relationship she had with her mother. There was the void of not having had a mom in the general sense of the term, not so much a June Cleaver, but more someone who takes care of you, looks after you, helps you, loves you. There was the abuse. And mingled with everything else, there was the unconditional love. The complexities of mental illness are true and clear and never better represented than in this story. I have to wonder: how much of Anne's behavior was pure selfishness, and how much was her disease?

I had to cry at some of the stuff, because you know the pain was real and strong, and there was no prettifying any of the horrible things that went on at that household. And at the same time I had to smile at certain things, like the tenderness in the relationship between Linda and her father. It was heartwarming, among all the raw pain.

The choice of photos complemented the writing perfectly. I loved reading this memoir, pain and sordid details and all.