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Saturday, October 21, 2023

Spotlight of Reading Jane: A Daughter's Memoir by Susannah Kennedy


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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
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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:


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1 comment:

  1. Sounds very interesting.

    Adding to your TBR?

    Thanks for stopping.

    ReplyDelete