Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers and the Crucible of Agin [Hardcover]

Lillian B. Rubin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2000

The best-selling psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin reflects on the struggle to forge an acceptable identity through middle age and into old age. She examines the lives of women as they grow from daughters into mothers, and move on into the intimidating territory of later years.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A noted sociologist, psychotherapist and author of nine books (The Transcendent Child, etc.), Rubin now recounts, with mingled sadness and joy, her experiences as a daughter, mother, wife and professional woman. Occasioned in part by the death of her 94-year-old mother and Rubin's own sudden illness in her 70s, this elegiac memoir seeks to come to terms with the process of aging by examining pivotal moments from the author's own life. The daughter of Russian emigrant Jews, Rubin lost her father when she was five years old. Her mother, an uneducated woman, found work in a garment factory. Rubin looks back with tenderness at her years as a lonely child, unable to please her mother and suffering fears of abandonment in the face of her mother's anger. Rubin graduated from high school at 15, and was expected to get a job and help contribute to her brother's college education. She dutifully complied, enjoying her work as a secretary, until she married at 19. Her relationship with her mother never improved; even on her deathbed, Rubin's mother mumbled to herself, "Why did you take my son and leave her? It's him I need, not her." Having long ago resolved to be unlike her mother in every way, Rubin recounts with satisfaction the loving relationship she has had with her own daughter. As she prepares to celebrate her 75th birthday, Rubin admires her husband's graceful acceptance of his 80th birthday and finds resolution in the shadow of her own mortality. With its intimate, conversational style, this insightful personal testament reveals how one woman has dealt with the changes of middle and old age. It's not exactly Wednesdays with Lillian, but there are enough similarities to tempt creative booksellers. Agent, Rhoda Weyr. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Sociologist and psychotherapist Rubin, currently a senior research associate at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley, has written powerful books before, for example, Families on the Fault Line (1993) and The Transcendent Child (1996). Now she has written a profoundly personal book, meditating on aging and on the mother-daughter relationship by describing a pivotal period in her own life. The middle aged are generally thought of as "the sandwich generation," struggling to care for parents and children at the same time. Yet Rubin faced that struggle in her 70s, coping with the final days of her angry, rejecting nonagenarian mother, with her own and her grown daughter's frightening health problems, and with the approach of her seventy-fifth birthday. Rubin is the quintessential "wise woman" celebrated by some cultures; her vivid reflections on love and loss, aging and memory will speak to mothers and daughters and women growing older but also to readers whose life experiences have been quite different from her own. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (October 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807067946
• ISBN-13: 978-0807067949
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,600,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courageous, revealing, and wise, October 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers and the Crucible of Agin (Hardcover)

Intimations of mortality form the framework for this eloquent memoir. Lillian Rubin is a brilliant, empathic woman, who over the years has bravely probed such topics as children who survive trauma, and families in transition. Now, at 75, she faces her own journey toward the inevitable, and generously shares her thoughts, fears, and insights. Rubin bares her psyche in this frank and forthright exploration of what is like to grow old--to savor the time remaining and explore the injuries and lessons of the past. Rubin shares with readers her own courageous meditations on mortality, as she faces her 75th birthday. When the fates collide to present the author with reason to worry not only about her daughter's health, her husband's well being, and her own life-threatening health crisis all at once, Rubin looks at the landscape of love, aging and loss with unflinching clarity. What does it mean to grow old? Where do faith, forgiveness, and redemption fit in? On page after page, I marvelled at the author's candor, at her ability to expose herself, to publically take that final, private tally of losses and gains. But by doing so, Rubin gives us all a gift. Above all, I found this to be a hopeful book, probing--and celebrating--the ties between mother and daughter, and underscoring the possibility of improving the landscape of love from generation to generation.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I feel I'm talking to a close friend, October 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers and the Crucible of Agin (Hardcover)

Once I told my 3 year old son that I'm no longer growing bigger, but older, he was so supprised, so was I. As I'm getting close to 30, I'm really wondering how to deal with getting old, also wondering how other women deal with it. But I never dare to ask anyone.
I had one month vacation back to China in August. Instead enjoying the visit, I was dealing with my brother's vanishing due to depress. And I was facing how sad my mom was and how she looked much older than her age, my father's fragile emotion. We also have to know how to support my 90 year old grandpa and 80 year old grandma.
My mother-in-law just got her US citizenship after 10 years jobless in US. She was a professor back in China. When I got married 5 years ago, I was so astonished by my mother-in-law's temper.
With these, I have questions and fears in my mind.
Reading Lillian Rubin's book didn't help me to resolve the tangle in my life, but it does help me to get answers to my Whys and face the fears in my life. I'm so glad she wrote this book and share her own experiences with us.