Customer Reviews

An Unfortunate Woman

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A good forty pages of this book were borrowed as the chapter "My Mother's Story" in Gifford's "Phantom Father" memoir of a few years ago: fair enough, as this book's long and underservedly out of print. Where this differs from most of the author's other memoir writing is that it is told from a woman's perspective: to be specific, his mother Peggy McCloud (not sure if this is her real name) and it is a sad story of a woman with an incredibly unlucky history in love and fortune. She is a survivor though and we are relieved that she will finally be asserting here independence by the book's end.

I could easily relate to this book for I have witnessed women close to me who have had their lives consumed by dominating Romeos, repeatedly making the same, optimistic mistakes. However, I think this book would have benefitted from Gifford's usual style of first person recollections as the whole thing moves too quickly to leave a lasting impression, rushing to cover the long and eventful history of her forty-odd years. To elaborate, several of the episodes have been written from the author's perspective to far greater effect in the Phantom Father in my opinion, with more detailing of the action. I liked this book a lot though and it is a lovely addition to Mr. Gifford's backlist.