This month, legendary cook, food writer, and Gourmet magazine editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl explores another side of her life, writing about her eccentric mother—almost 20 years after her death—in her memoir, Not Becoming My Mother & Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way (Penguin Press). Here, Reichl, herself the mother of a 20-year-old son, discusses the books that she feels best capture the complexity of motherhood from the perspective of parent and child.
Mary Poppins
by P.L. Travers (Harcourt Children's Books)
"I had earaches when I was a little girl, and my mother often read this book to me in the middle of the night. The Mary Poppins of the book is not the saccharine movie character. She is both great fun and a difficult figure who can, like my own mother did, shift moods easily. In contrast, Travers offers the perfectly sweet, extremely ineffectual Mrs. Banks. It's the choice between the real mother and the magic mother who is complicated but enriches your life. As a young girl, I knew there was something in this story for me. I think for someone growing up in the '50s, when mothers were all like Mrs. Banks—housewives who were supposed to exist only in the service of their families—the idea of someone with her own passions, following her own dictates, was very appealing. Mary Poppins had her own life, and if you tagged along with her, you were rewarded with wonderful adventures."
Hearts
by Hilma Wolitzer (Ballantine)
"This is an amazing novel. Linda is a young woman who has been married for only six weeks when her husband dies suddenly of a coronary seizure, leaving her with custody of his 13-year-old daughter, Robin. This naive young widow finds herself saddled with a very worldly, nasty stepdaughter. Then Linda discovers she is pregnant, and she and Robin end up mothering each other. This struck me as a good, if extreme, metaphor for what motherhood can be: You have to be open to the things your children can teach you. If you're smart, you realize you and your child have a lot to learn from each other, especially during those difficult teenage years. Writing my book about my mother, I found myself deeply regretting that I hadn't been open to her when I was Robin's age. I was so angry that I had missed my chance. That's why this book resonates for me. The mother and stepdaughter take this journey together and come out in a good place."
Away
by Amy Bloom (Random House)
"I've never read a book in which a woman is given the opportunity to be as brave as the main character of this novel is. Lillian Leyb is a loner who walks across the world to find her daughter. It starts in 1920s New York City, where Leyb, who has fled a pogrom in Russia, is living on her own. She believes her whole family—her parents, her husband, her child—has been killed. When she is told that her daughter is alive, she sets off to find her in Siberia, although she has no money and little hope of actually getting there. She just goes, unquestioningly. This meant a lot to me, because many years ago we adopted a daughter, then lost her when the birth mother asked for her back months later. When that happened, I turned into someone I didn't recognize. The maternal instinct is as mysterious as the sexual instinct, and as powerful. It's not rational. It's primal. It's one of the great joys of being a parent, too—the first time you understand that if a car were hurtling toward you and your child, you would absolutely throw yourself in front of it to save your child. There's a deep joy in realizing you're capable of that selflessness. There are things that you couldn't do as yourself—but as a mother, you can do anything. Anything."
The Little Disturbances of Man
by Grace Paley (Penguin)
"I remember first reading Paley and thinking, This is a voice I want to keep close. No matter what you read of hers, it ends up being about mothers and children. More than that, it's about being an imperfect parent and understanding that it's okay; your child will survive. Though terrible trouble hangs over the families she writes about, they are humorous and brave. The parents are hapless, the fathers disappear, the mothers have affairs—but the kids are resilient. When my son was little and I thought I'd done something terribly stupid, I'd read these stories and think, Oh, it'll be all right. Paley makes you believe that all human beings have these enormous capacities. She is like the smart, good grandmother we all wish we had."
The Painted Drum
by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins)
"Like much of Erdrich's writing, this book is about the effect of the dead on the living. Faye is an appraiser who is part Native American, and when she finds a painted drum in an estate, she is compelled to steal it, although she doesn't really know why. She goes to a reservation to return the drum and finds out that the Native Americans believe it is a living thing that holds the spirit of a little girl who died from her mother's negligence. Faye learns about ruin and revival, and that good and bad are intertwined, just as life and death are. For Erdrich, nobody dies; they just move on to another place, and we need to be continually listening for the lessons they want to teach us. For me, my mother's diaries were like the drum. Reading her journals for my book was a stunning encounter with someone who had been dead for almost 20 years. My mother spoke to me; she turned out to be not at all the person I thought she was, and one with a great many things to teach me."
