Say thanks with a gift card.
Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows.
Buy new:
-53% $8.85
FREE delivery Monday, November 10 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
$8.85 with 53 percent savings
List Price: $19.00
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery Monday, November 10 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 4 hrs 25 mins
In Stock
$$8.85 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$8.85
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
FREE refund/replacement until Jan 31, 2026
FREE refund/replacement until Jan 31, 2026
For the 2025 holiday season, eligible items purchased between November 1 and December 31, 2025 can be returned until January 31, 2026.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
$6.28
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
Book shows signs of little to no use. Book shows signs of little to no use. See less
FREE delivery November 16 - 20 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery November 16 - 19
$$8.85 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$8.85
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Added to

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Vivian Gornick
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Fierce Attachments: A Memoir (FSG Classics) Paperback – September 14, 2005

by Vivian Gornick (Author), Jonathan Lethem (Introduction)
4.2 out of 5 stars 1,293 ratings
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$8.85","priceAmount":8.85,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"8","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"85","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"Gcw4a%2FQMLYK3vZQW%2Foge4%2BNvzQXJ5YtpiHWGxIXbzI17vu%2Ft3ca8a111gWjcyOW2MDMdUDw0oUUoyLpFIfIdST13aDDT5JWwpvE%2FVoO8RWr5n9mV8JTyki5hTM1GpM3oV4TeP3hCrZY%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$6.28","priceAmount":6.28,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"6","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"28","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"Gcw4a%2FQMLYK3vZQW%2Foge4%2BNvzQXJ5Ytp3%2FaKY7AaUZkx9nWZz8ku%2B9xdCKlV%2F2Rjyn2TW59ikEAgwcIYDyHiPd5t%2FZmmZj5t5t09brm9DUY3meHdI0GMAznErnbOqIuqHMtAB3jlerqUN4qxlOza4LTIipMJQQ%2B2q29gIm2WPaa4%2F73tAy%2Fm%2FRqNgdUAlT2T","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments―hailed by the New York Times for the renowned feminist author’s “mesmerizing, thrilling” truths within its pages―has been selected by the publication’s book critics as the #1 Best Memoir of the Past 50 Years.

In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. There have been numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick’s groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O’Brien has called “the principal crux of female despair”: the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond.

Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of “urban peasants,” Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother’s romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into adulthood, to affect Gornick’s struggle to find herself in love and in work.

As Gornick walks with her aged mother through the streets of New York, arguing and remembering the past, each wins the reader’s admiration: the caustic and clear-thinking daughter, for her courage and tenacity in really talking to her mother about the most basic issues of their lives, and the still powerful and intuitively-wise old woman, who again and again proves herself her daughter’s mother.

Unsparing, deeply courageous, Fierce Attachments is one of the most remarkable documents of family feeling that has been written, a classic that helped start the memoir boom and remains one of the most moving examples of the genre.

“[Gornick] stares unflinchingly at all that is hidden, difficult, strange, unresolvable in herself and others―at loneliness, sexual malice and the devouring, claustral closeness of mothers and daughters…[Fierce Attachments is] a portrait of the artist as she finds a language―original, allergic to euphemism and therapeutic banalities―worthy of the women that raised her.”―The New York Times

Read more
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  4. Publication date
    September 14, 2005
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0374529965
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0374529963
Next slide of product details

Frequently bought together

This item: Fierce Attachments: A Memoir (FSG Classics)
$8.85
Get it as soon as Monday, Nov 10
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative
$10.59
Get it as soon as Monday, Nov 10
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Odd Woman and the City
$12.69
Get it as soon as Monday, Nov 10
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price: $00
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Choose items to buy together.

Frequently purchased items with fast delivery

Page 1 of 1 Start over
Previous set of slides
  2. Motherland: A Memoir
    Paula Ramón
     
    Paperback
    $16.99
    Get it as soon as Monday, Nov 10
    FREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by Amazon
  3. Blue Nights: A Memoir
    Joan Didion
     
    Paperback
    $10.39
    Get it as soon as Monday, Nov 10
    FREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by Amazon
  4. Devotion: A Memoir
    Dani Shapiro
     
    Paperback
    $12.02
    Get it as soon as Monday, Nov 10
    FREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by Amazon
    Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).
  5. Thirteen Senses: A Memoir
    Victor Villasenor
     
    Paperback
    $10.61
    Get it as soon as Monday, Nov 10
    FREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by Amazon
  6. Unfinished Woman: A Memoir
    Robyn Davidson
     
    Hardcover
    $16.53
    Get it as soon as Monday, Nov 10
    FREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by Amazon
    Only 6 left in stock - order soon.
Next set of slides

Customers also bought or read

Page 1 of 1Start over
Previous page
  1. Odd Woman and the City
    Paperback
    $12.69
    Delivery Monday
  2. Jailbreak of Sparrows: Poems
    Hardcover
    $21.69
    Delivery Monday
  3. Lives Other Than My Own: A Memoir
    Paperback
    $13.28
    Delivery Monday
  4. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
    Paperback
    $9.67
    Delivery Monday
  5. The Liars' Club: A Memoir
    Paperback
    $11.21
    Delivery Monday
  7. Approaching Eye Level
    Paperback
    $15.23
    Delivery Monday
  8. Patrimony: A True Story
    Paperback
    $13.65
    Delivery Monday
  9. The Boys of My Youth
    Paperback
    $10.81
    Delivery Tuesday
  10. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative
    Paperback
    $13.49
    Delivery Monday
  11. The Art of Memoir
    Paperback
    $11.00
    Delivery Monday
  12. Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader
    Paperback
    $15.49
    FREE delivery Thu, Nov 20
  13. The Emigrants (New Directions Paperbook)
    Paperback
    $9.39
    $3.99 delivery Fri, Nov 21
  14. The Argonauts
    Paperback
    $9.01
    Delivery Monday
  16. How To Write An Autobiographical Novel: Essays
    Paperback
    $10.26
    Delivery Monday
  17. Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life
    Paperback
    $13.66
    Delivery Tuesday
  19. Mother Mary Comes to Me
    Just released
    Hardcover
    $28.00
    Delivery Wed, Nov 26
  20. Negroland: A Memoir
    Paperback
    $11.96
    Delivery Wed, Nov 12
  21. Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing
    Paperback
    $12.20
    Delivery Monday
  22. Paula: A Memoir
    Paperback
    $10.19
    Delivery Monday
  23. A Burning: A Read with Jenna Pick: A Novel
    Paperback
    $16.10
    Delivery Monday
  24. Life's Work
    Paperback
    $11.49
    Delivery Monday
  25. A Woman's Story
    Paperback
    $8.49
    Delivery Mon, Nov 17
  26. The Chronology of Water: A Memoir
    Paperback
    $12.41
    Delivery Monday
  27. Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen
    Paperback
    $14.68
    Delivery Monday
  28. Notes to John
    Hardcover
    $12.77
    Delivery Monday
  29. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir
    Paperback
    $10.59
    Delivery Monday
  30. H Is for Hawk
    Paperback
    $9.61
    Delivery Monday
Next page
Loading...

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There’s a clarity to this memoir that’s so brilliant it's unsettling; Gornick finds a measure of freedom in her writing and her feminist activism, but even then, she and her mother can never let each other go." ― Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review

“There are only so many words in the dictionary with which to say how very good this book is. Fierce Attachments deserves them all.” ―The Washington Post Book World

“Gornick is a distinctive and startling artist--the true subject of this brilliant book.” ―The Nation

“Searingly intimate and courageous... Gornick's writing is brilliant, clean, and colorful, simultaneously evoking the inner and outer spaces she is trying to illuminate.” ―Mother Jones

“Inspiring... Gornick carves, in careful, electrifying words, each scar and glory of her unconventional life.” ―Guardian Book Supplement

About the Author

Vivian Gornick's books include Approaching Eye Level, The End of The Novel of Love, and The Situation and The Story. She lives in New York City.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 14, 2005
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374529965
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374529963
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #63,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 1,293 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
1,293 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find this memoir a deeply satisfying and quick read, praising its well-written and honest account of a mother-daughter relationship. The book offers rich moments of personal insight and finds everyday details, with one customer noting how it captures the conundrums and paradoxes of life. While many find it easy to use, one customer mentions it can be difficult to follow.

Select to learn more

ReadabilityWriting qualityHonestyMemoir qualityDepthStorytellingEase of use
19 customers mention "Readability"14 positive5 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as a deeply satisfying and quick read, with one customer noting it leaves them breathless.

"...It’s a fantastic read." Read more

"A quick read, and somewhat enjoyable. A little disjointed, but not bad. Unfortunately, nothing stands out as particularly memorable about it." Read more

"I found this book boring and difficult to follow...." Read more

"...Well written memoir that truly enjoyed reading." Read more

19 customers mention "Writing quality"17 positive2 negative

Customers praise the writing style of the memoir.

"...I never would have chosen it, but so glad I read it. Well written memoir that truly enjoyed reading." Read more

"...Skillfully written and teeming with personal insights that will tug at many readers' most defended preconceptions, presumptions, and ideals; The..." Read more

"Tough and beautifully written." Read more

"A rough read, but extremely well-written." Read more

17 customers mention "Honesty"15 positive2 negative

Customers appreciate the book's honesty, particularly in its portrayal of mother-daughter relationships, with one customer describing it as a searingly honest account.

"Enjoyed the detail and honesty as Vivian described her tumultuous relationship with her mother; could have used more insight into her dad and sibling." Read more

"Vivian Gornick’s brutally honest memoir, Fierce Attachments, sets a high standard for “personal journalism,” as this writer is unbowed by past..." Read more

"...that come with "survival" are deftly explored at times with great empathy and at other times with angry recrimination...." Read more

"Moving. Touching. Raw but so real. A model of gripping memoir writing." Read more

16 customers mention "Memoir quality"16 positive0 negative

Customers praise the memoir for its rich personal insights, with one customer noting how it captures the conundrums and paradoxes of life.

"Gornick has a real ear for dialogue. This book is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Her writing is glorious...." Read more

"This is a wonderful memoir. Unfortunately, the first copy I received was missing the last 20 pages-- the pages were there, but they were blank...." Read more

"Considered the number 1 best memoir by the New York Times - really???..." Read more

"...It connected me with my own emotions towards my mother: true love, devotion, rivalry and antagonism and sometimes hate, just to find out how much of..." Read more

9 customers mention "Depth"9 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the depth of the memoir, praising its self-revelation and telling details, with one customer noting the author's skill in describing inner states.

"...to life a relatively seamless relationship with her mother by her depth of insight and easy, well written words effortlessly...." Read more

"Enjoyed the detail and honesty as Vivian described her tumultuous relationship with her mother; could have used more insight into her dad and sibling." Read more

"...She walks us through not only what happened, with telling details, but the landscape of her mind, her thoughts. Small moments become momentous...." Read more

"...i love the way so much can be conveyed in just a few simple but deep observations...." Read more

7 customers mention "Storytelling"6 positive1 negative

Customers appreciate the storytelling in the book, with one review noting how it captures the conundrums and paradoxes of life, while another describes it as deeply felt and conflicted.

"Good story. Really made me feel like I knew something about the writer. I don't read this genre often but I'm glad for this one." Read more

"...It captures the conundrums and paradoxes of the puzzling life of the generations of "American" children who are born with the expectation that they..." Read more

"...I wish I’d read it sooner. Gornick’s story is compelling, and her skill at bringing her mother’s voice to life in the narrative is something every..." Read more

"...She details in a wonderful storytelling way how difficult it is to achieve and maintain balance in the face of our past...." Read more

3 customers mention "Ease of use"2 positive1 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about how easy the book is to use.

"...seamless relationship with her mother by her depth of insight and easy, well written words effortlessly...." Read more

"I found this book boring and difficult to follow...." Read more

"Fast, Honest and great price--easy to use--true to their word! I'm happy to know their are honest people out there!" Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Hopeful Reader
    5.0 out of 5 stars A new favorite
    Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2025
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Spectacular writing that made for a spectacular reading experience. Such fun to find a new favorite—a book that I will certainly go back to reread favorite passages. It is a book to share; I read passages out loud to my husband. He liked it too.
    Helpful
     Report
  • Biak G.
    4.0 out of 5 stars A roller coaster ride for mothers and daughters
    Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2016
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Searing memories, fine writing, leaves the reader breathless and of very mixed feelings about this extreme self- and other-revelation. Revelation is clearly not in the service of sensationalism. Rather, the telling heightens the understanding of any mother or daughter about issues common to all of us. So I found it inspired much thoughtfulness on my part. But, privacy falls victim. Was this book written while Gornick's mother was still alive? Much more akin to the daughter than to the mother, and quite horrified by some of the mother's actions, I nevertheless empathized with what would (I imagine) have been very hard for her to read. And yes, other reviewers have said the book presents both mother and daughter's sides of the story. Well worth reading. You don't even have to be Jewish, though familiarity with the culture of the period of Gornick's childhood helps a lot.
    14 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Sandy R. Jimenez
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Staggeringly Effective Personal Work
    Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2022
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Gormick gives us an unflinching look across her life as a child, as a daughter, as a teenager, as a student, as a writer and as a woman through the prism of her personal relationships. It captures the conundrums and paradoxes of the puzzling life of the generations of "American" children who are born with the expectation that they succeed their immigrant parents in New York, yet honor them by never quite becoming independent of their (parents') influence, thrall, and will. The love, passions, regrets, conflict, and obligation that come with "survival" are deftly explored at times with great empathy and at other times with angry recrimination. Skillfully written and teeming with personal insights that will tug at many readers' most defended preconceptions, presumptions, and ideals; The lifelong arc and sweep of this memoir challenges many of our privately held beliefs about love and it explores, often in decidedly indelicate and brutal fashion, the relationships between lovers, friends, and parents.
    6 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • algo41
    3.0 out of 5 stars Writing good, author not that interesting to me
    Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2019
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    My problem with this memoir, I guess, is that I was not that interested in the author nor her relationship with her mother. There are some compelling passages, a sample of which is below. While Gornick was attached to her mother, at best she could “come close to loving her”. In college Gornick reads a history of different concepts of love, but surprisingly, as an intellectual, she never defines her own concept. She does tell her mother “that nowadays love has to be earned. Even by mothers and sons”.

    Her mother’s depression was a blight on Gornick’s life. She expresses the theory that “In refusing to recover from my father’s death she (her mother) had discovered that her life was endowed with a seriousness for thirty years”. Gornick herself did try psychotherapy.

    The things that most made Gornick happy were ideas, thinking, writing, discussing, giving speeches. She very much enjoyed sex, walking (and riding a bicycle as a kid), street life and “a tree outside that filled the window (of her small apartment) in spring and summer with birds and foliage”. She had friends, including a life long childhood friend, but they are not celebrated.

    PASSAGES. Outside the tenement window, “The clear air, the unshadowed light, the women calling to each other, the sounds of their voices mixed with the smell of clothes drying in the sun, all that texture and color swaying in open space”. “The quarrel between Nettie and Mama, when it broke out, moved with the speed of brushfire. Released from subterranean heat, it burned so hot, so fast, within seconds it had achieved scorched earth: on this ground nothing would grow again.” “The only strangers at the wedding were Stefan (her 1st husband) and I”. “His (a lover) intelligence was like a piece of railroad track, …….. with a single train car riding it back and forth between stations, imitating motion and journey”. “Then a day came when I also saw that learning to live without a future is a sterile exercise: what looks like life within a walled garden is really life inside a renovated prison yard”. “Its making me lonely now to make love with you, and you not know what my life is about”.
    9 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Swan
    5.0 out of 5 stars Life of a Critical Writer
    Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2022
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Vivian Gornick’s brutally honest memoir, Fierce Attachments, sets a high standard for “personal journalism,” as this writer is unbowed by past definitions of what is considered appropriate for autobiographic material. She fearlessly tells of her smothering and inspiring relationship with her fierce, widowed mother, a relationship which sets the template for all her future relationships. Brusquely poetic, Gornick lets us into her most intimate feelings as she struggles with life’s choices of love and work. A legendary writer of the Village Voice from the 1970s, she excels at writing about emotional truth.
    7 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • drinking tea with mittens on
    4.0 out of 5 stars almost the best
    Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2021
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    i love memoirs and this one is among the best (i prefer patti smith's Just Kids). i love the way so much can be conveyed in just a few simple but deep observations. sometimes i think memoirs get mistaken for autobiographies in which the reader wants to know everything in the plot line of the author, but a good memoir is not that. the only reason i moved this from a five star to a four star is that i felt the section about her personal relationships was rushed and not written in the say way she wrote about growing up or about her mother. i felt the memoir "recapped" things when it came to explaining her relationships instead of inviting us into the moment as was often the case when she wrote about time spent with her mother. but all that aside, i still went ahead and purchased two more of her books because i DO like the way she writes and the insight she shares about life on this planet earth.
    12 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
  • Cliente de Amazon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Relación madre e hija
    Reviewed in Mexico on June 7, 2021
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Me gustó. Si estás buscando una biografía que abarque relación madre hija este libro es para ti.
    Report
  • Izzielickedabee
    5.0 out of 5 stars Intimate, intense and intelligent - wonderful book, wonderful writer
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 15, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Vivian Gornick is a New York writer known for her memoirs and essays. 'Fierce Attachments' takes the idea of the 'flaneu'r and translates it into journeys through New York streets taken by the author and her mother. These walks are intercut by a 'sentimental' interior journey through their shared history, centred on the author's attempts to achieve independence without abandoning her past.

    There are some wonderful vignettes of New York life -particularly women's lives - such as the sections set in the Bronx building where Gornick grew up. It's a book about loss and disappointment but also about the curious forms love can take between a mother and daughter. I'm aware that that might make it seem mawkish or trite, it is anything but. As fierce in places as its title suggests, for me it was an intimate, intense, intelligent and tender revelation; written in beautifully constructed prose. I was so taken with it, I immediately bought another of Gornick's work and wondered how I had lived without her voice for so long.
    One person found this helpful
     Report
  • Cicerone
    5.0 out of 5 stars Un chef d'oeuvre
    Reviewed in France on July 18, 2022
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Le dispositif d'écriture binaire est simple et fonctionne bien (allers-retours passé/présent). La simplicité de l'écriture alliée à la pertinence et à la sensibilité des observations rend l'ensemble vibrant et réaliste. Le lecteur plonge dans les personnages, devient chacune d'elles pendant un instant. Juste et bouleversant.
    Report
  • Lucia
    5.0 out of 5 stars Qué maravilla,
    Reviewed in Spain on September 13, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    Este libro dedicado a una madre, y a una ciudad, Nueva York. Vivido, real, interesantísimo, fantásticamente bien escrito. Libros por los que apetecería dejarlo todo y ponerse a escribir! Me siento como caminando con ellas por ese NYC maravilloso de otoño.
    Report
  • P.V.Pieters
    3.0 out of 5 stars Hechting van dochter aan moeder
    Reviewed in the Netherlands on May 24, 2020
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Leest goed. Psychologie van de nature &nurture in dochter- moeder relatie.
    Report