PHOTO SOURCE:
TYPORAMA
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READING JANE
SUSANNAH KENNEDY
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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR AND DIANE SAARINEN OF SAIMA AGENCY
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October 5, 2023
Sibylline Press
*************PRAISE FOR READING JANE:
The best
book I’ve read in years. The alternating spirals of love and distancing between
an adult daughter who sought warmth, and a mother who just couldn’t deliver it.
Elegant and beautifully written.— David
Bodanis, best-selling author of The Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency in
a World Turned Mean
Reading Jane is a brilliant memoir. It opens the door for each of us to
truly consider what our family life (or lack of it) has meant to whom we have
become. Kennedy reads her mother’s journals after her mother’s intentional end
of life. What she learns and how it informs her own developmental history is
presented in vivid, poignant, reflective terms. Her use of metaphor and shifts
in time and space create a relational portrait of transgenerational and
extended family experience that is both heartbreaking and invigorating. It is a
gift to clinicians and non-clinicians alike. — Dr. Harriet
Wolfe, M.D., President, International Psychoanalytical Association
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ABOUT READING JANE:
After the calculated suicide of Susannah Kennedy's domineering and
narcissistic mother, Susannah grapples with the ties between mothers and
daughters and the choices parents make in this gripping memoir that
shows what freedom looks like when we choose to examine the
uncomfortable past.
Jane is to the world a
charismatic personality -- opinionated, an inner-city teacher and public
activist, a lover of Italy, proud and successful -- who thrives on a
carefully crafted life narrative. Susannah is her beautiful only
daughter, her intended protege. All through Susannah's childhood, Jane
settles once per day to chronicle her life. In those years of magnetic
twosomeness, "Mommy, can I read your diaries?" is a frequent question.
Jane starts off saying "Some day" and then she changes to "When you are
the age I was when I wrote them," then later, it becomes "Maybe," then
"No, probably never." The diaries recede. Susannah grows up.
But
then Jane at 75, healthy and fit, chooses suicide, insisting it would
be better for everyone this way. That controlling assessment is wrong
from the moment Susannah hears the news and has to identify the body. As
someone who has always sensed the stricter, darker truth, and fought to
resist the control imposed on her by her mother's seductive tale, she
actively resists reading the 45 years of diaries her mother left behind.
When she finally dares to "read" Jane, it's like unlatching a Pandora's
Box. For a year, Susannah reads, twisting and turning to the truths she
uncovers, comparing what she remembers against the strange pull of her
mother's public tale. This process is accompanied by physical symptoms,
each memory encased in her body. And then she uncovers yet another
secret, one that redefines her mother forever. At last Susannah is able
to separate, heal and embrace her own story.
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EXCERPT OF READING JANE - BE SURE TO LISTEN:
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist Susannah Kennedy was born in
India before returning to the US.
As an adult, Kennedy traveled
extensively on her own, first in Italy, and then through the Middle East
and India, settling for two years in Egypt before moving as a reporter
to Dallas, Texas.
At Oxford University, she specialized in Arab culture
and politics, receiving her DPhil in social anthropology.
She and her
German husband raised three children in a thatched roof farmhouse in the
German countryside.
They now live in the Bay Area.
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FIND HER:
Sounds very interesting.
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