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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
A memoir written as a promise to a dying loved one is bound to be a heart-wrenching tale, and in I Hope You Have a Good Life, novelist Campbell Armstrong delivers. The book is a paean to his former wife, Eileen, who died of cancer in 1998. It's also a tribute to her daughter, Barbara, whose decades-long search for her biological mother ended in the discovery that they shared the same devastating disease. In reading about Eileen's courageous battle, her reunion with the daughter she gave up at the age of 17, and the support of her stalwart friends, we enter a small circle of strong, fighting women.
A memoir written as a promise to a dying loved one is bound to be a heart-wrenching tale, and in I Hope You Have a Good Life, novelist Campbell Armstrong delivers. The book is a paean to his former wife, Eileen, who died of cancer in 1998. It's also a tribute to her daughter, Barbara, whose decades-long search for her biological mother ended in the discovery that they shared the same devastating disease. In reading about Eileen's courageous battle, her reunion with the daughter she gave up at the age of 17, and the support of her stalwart friends, we enter a small circle of strong, fighting women.
At his best, Armstrong paints these women with a gentle, almost reverent brush, portraying the lives of ordinary people striving to surmount overwhelming circumstances. Unfortunately, however, this loving picture is framed against the intrusive backdrop of his own struggles: substance abuse, affairs, alcoholism, his frequent uprooting of his family. While he's straying into his attempts to dry out and subsequent lapses into what he terms "Slipsville," one wonders impatiently when Barbara will finally make contact. Whether Armstrong chose to highlight Eileen and Barbara's courage by contrasting it with his own failures is uncertain, but the result is not exactly flattering.
The author's regretful musings on life and death are sometimes insightful, but more often, they distract. His narration, however, is engaging. Glimpses of the young couple's beginnings in 1960s Glasgow fascinate but are fleeting, and it's not until Armstrong's persona steps out and Barbara's search for her mother comes forward that the reader really becomes involved. Ultimately, Eileen's final days of fear and hope, the unswerving devotion of her newfound daughter, and the emerging strength of her three sons are a moving testament to the power of family--extended, reunited, troubled, or otherwise. It's with the vividness of this portrait that Armstrong fulfills his promise to Eileen. --Lisa Costantino
From Publishers Weekly
Heartbreaking and beautiful, Armstrong's memoir turns on a family drama fraught with savage irony: a mother and the out-of-wedlock daughter whom she abandoned shortly after birth are reunited after 42 yearsAbut both are suffering from advanced cancer. The mother in question, Armstrong's ex-wife Eileen, was 17 in 1955 when, at her parents' insistence, she gave up her baby, Barbara, for adoption (the baby's 28-year-old father dropped out of the picture). "I love you. I hope you have a good life," Eileen whispered to the infant, devastated. Barbara's momentous weeks-long reunion in Phoenix with her dying mother, whom she spent years trying to locate, is deeply moving. Glasgow-born novelist Armstrong had a troubled marriage with Eileen amid his bouts of heavy drinking and affairs, leading up to family counseling that failed to extricate him from his love affair with the woman who is now his wife. Having remained in touch with his ex-wife, Armstrong was also reunited at Eileen's deathbed with their three sons, and ruefully examines his own failings as a father. Barbara, still fighting her own illness, becomes an integral part of her half-brothers' lives, almost a surrogate mother. A masterful diagnostician of the human heart, Armstrong writes sensuously, with ruthless candor and wisdom about the wilting of relationships, the courage ordinary people muster to survive, the way tragedy can bring a family together, and how we all die alone. Few will read this intense book with dry eyes. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors and Literary Agents 2004: Who They Are! What They Want! and How to Win Them Over! (Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents) by Jeff Herman on page 61
- Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents: Who They Are! What They Want! and How to Win Them Over! (13th Edition) by Jeff Herman on page 69
