The Center of the Universe: A Memoir [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Piquant and ribald, Bachrach's debut memoir about her dotty mother from Providence, R.I., revolves around the accidental gassing accident aboard her parents' boat in 1983 that left her father dead of exhaust asphyxiation and her mother with severe brain damage. The author was then a 33-year-old advertising executive working in Paris on a new (ultimately doomed) campaign to introduce antiperspirant to the French, when she rushed back to the U.S. at the behest of her two professional siblings, expecting a double funeral but finding her tenacious, irrepressible 56-year-old mother, Lola, emerging from a coma. Widowed, confused and mis-medicated, Lola was not expected to recover from her carbon-monoxide poisoning, but her long-suffering children knew better, having endured a long history of Lola's erratic, flamboyant, bipolar yo-yoing requiring years of psychiatry, shock treatment and hospitalization. Over time her aphasia, echolalia, catatonia and incontinence amazingly do turn around, but Lola is ever a force to be reckoned with, the granddaughter of a prominent Rhode Island rabbi, molested in her youth, lustily married to so-called Mr. Fix It (also the name of the boat, which he incorrectly rewired, causing the release of gas vapors that killed him) and gamely re-marriageable (Men are like buses, she maintained, lining up another husband: Miss one, hop on another). Bachrach's prose is wry, risky, and feels like she has found her moment at last. (May)
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From Booklist

Bachrach’s account of her childhood with a bipolar mother has a freshness and loopy humor as she describes Lola, her red-haired mom who believed that proper connection with the Fibonacci numerical sequence would lead to God. Equally palpable are Bachrach’s memories of her and her siblings’ confusion during torrential emotional scenes, which were sometimes followed by openly, wildly sexual reconciliations between her parents. Hypersexual Lola’s medical history includes the usual 1950s shock treatments, so that “whole chunks of Lola were scorched earth.” Returning to Providence when a boating accident kills Dad and renders Mom comatose, the three adult siblings gather at Mort’s surreally funny funeral, and at Lola’s bedside, where the patient’s “serenity makes her unrecognizable, as though someone pressed the mute button on her personality.” What follows Lola’s “rising from metaphorical ashes” as Bachrach cares for her recovering mom are funny-sad revelations of family secrets and identities, well-placed flashbacks, and a scary chronicle of Lola’s subsequent breakdown. All is infused with humanizing pathos, and readers may well tear through this compelling read in a single sitting. --Whitney Scott

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307270904
• ISBN-13: 978-0307270900
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #281,096 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you have tears, prepare to laugh ..., May 2, 2009

By	A. Black (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Like a modern alchemist, Nancy Bachrach has used the magic of language to transform a family tragedy into high comedic art. With "The Center of the Universe," she has created an engrossing 24-karat memoir that gleams with wry wit, warm compassion and stiletto-sharp observations on human foibles, professional posturing and corporate mishigass. (Sell deodorants to the French? Come on: who needs Secret when you have Chanel). "The Center of the Universe" provides page after page of rich rewards, including portraits of a family whose genes seem to have gone astray and a madcap heroine who will absolutely win your heart. If nothing else, "The Center of the Universe" will stir your emotions and make your own family seem almost normal.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Every word is a gem, May 1, 2009

By	P. Warner "memoir addict" (NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nancy Bachrach is a fabulous storyteller, and she has a dramatic, harrowing, hilarious story to tell. But unlike most authors these days, Nancy does not waste a single word. She strings her thoughts together like a diamond setter places stones in settings...carefully, meticulously and magically.

From the moment she gets a phonecall telling her that her father has died in a boating accident and her mother is in a comma (typo made on her chart by someone in a tiny rural hospital) Nancy leads the reader through her family saga with wit, compassion and a clarity of thinking that left me awestruck. Many of us have crazy families. But how many of us could live with our families, observe their madness and motives, analyze them with sensitivity and intelligence, and then tell their stories in a way that makes this book impossible to put down?

This was without a doubt one of the best memoirs I have ever read. People will fall in love with Lola, Nancy's mother, who sports a "red beehive that turns into cotton candy or the hair of a troll doll" after a ride in a convertible with the top down. This whole book is like a wild ride in a convertible -- thrilling, full of life, scary, dangerous and life affirming.

After one particularly harrowing curve in the road, the author states that she has been "dealt a new hand and I have no idea what will turn out to be wild."

The same could be said for anyone who picks up this wonderful book, fastens their seat belts and enjoys the wild ride. Nothing in life is predictable. Thank goodness this author shows great judgment when she holds our hand and takes us on her wild ride.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hysterically funny!, April 29, 2009

By	BBBrain (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews

An ironic, hysterically funny account of life with a crazy mother, an inept father and ancestors including a chief rabbi who went to jail for selling kosher wine during Prohibition. Nancy Bachrach's memoir revolves around her father's death from carbon monoxide poisoning and her mother emerging from a coma with severe brain damage. But the real story is how Bachrach and her siblings heal from years of neglect and abuse while helping their mother fight an agonizing battle to regain her mind and rebuild her life. This story carries you to the end with laugh out loud scenes, pages of brilliant wit and a wonderment at how it will all turn out. It's really terrific and needs to be read and enjoyed.