38. Glitter and Glue
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Kelly Corrigan
Genre: Non Fiction, Memoir
Info: 240 pages, published February 4, 2014
Format: Book
Summary
When Kelly Corrigan was a teenager, her mother summarized the family dynamic as “Your father’s the glitter, but I’m the glue.” This concept was meaningless to Kelly at the time, but took on significance as Kelly grew older and encountered the slings and arrows of life. Glitter and Glue recounts Corrigan’s post-college adventure working as an au pair in Australia for the Tanner family who had just lost their wife and mother. While navigating the family dynamics, Kelly started hearing her mother’s voice everywhere. During the time she spent with the Tanner kids she started reconsidering her relationship with her mother.
Quotes
“When I was growing up, my mom was guided by the strong belief that to befriend me was to deny me the one thing a kid really needed to survive childhood: a mother.”
“I want her to know that I’ll take care of her, even when it’s not pretty or easy or cheap. Of course I will. The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she’s gone, it’s a whole different game.”
“I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day.”
“The only mothers who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, distort, neglect, baffle, appall, inhibit, incite, insult, or age poorly are dead mothers, perfectly contained in photographs, pressed into two dimensions like a golden autumn leaf.”
“But now I see there’s no such thing as “a” woman, “one” woman. There are dozens inside every one of them. I probably should have figured this out sooner, but what child can see the women inside her mom, what with all the Motherness blocking out everything else?”
“It’s easy to love kids who make you feel competent.”
“And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.”
My Take
A few years ago, I read Kelly Corrigan’s debut novel, The Middle Place, which focused on her father, a fascinating character named Greenie. I loved that book and eagerly anticipated reading Glitter and Glue which focused on Corrigan’s mother. While I prefer The Middle Place (Corrigan probably used a lot of her best autobiographical material in her first book), there is a lot of truth and tenderness about Mother-Daughter relationships in Glitter and Glue. If you are a mother, a daughter, or both, this book is definitely worth a read.
