Tasha
A Son's Memoir
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A Washington Post Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
In the spirit of Fierce Attachments and The End of Your Life Book Club, acclaimed novelist Brian Morton delivers a “superb” (Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air), darkly funny memoir of his mother’s vibrant life and the many ways in which their tight, tumultuous relationship was refashioned in her twilight years.
Tasha Morton is a force of nature: a brilliant educator who’s left her mark on generations of students—and also a whirlwind of a mother, intrusive, chaotic, oppressively devoted, and irrepressible.
For decades, her son Brian has kept her at a self-protective distance, but when her health begins to fail, he knows it’s time to assume responsibility for her care. Even so, he’s not prepared for what awaits him, as her refusal to accept her own fragility leads to a series of epic outbursts and altercations that are sometimes frightening, sometimes wildly comic, and sometimes both.
Clear-eyed, “deeply stirring” (Dani Shapiro, The New York Times Book Review), and brimming with dark humor, Tasha is both a vivid account of an unforgettable woman and a stark look at the impossible task of caring for an elderly parent in a country whose unofficial motto is “you’re on your own.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The tumultuous bond between a mother and son animates this unstinting yet tender work from novelist Morton (Florence Gordon). When, after years of "successfully her at arm's length," Morton's mother's worsening dementia forced the two of them to reconnect, Morton aired his frustrations on paper. While he confesses to satirizing his difficult and "voluble Jewish mother" in his novel, The Dylanist, he offers a more nuanced look here at the woman who believed "the people she loved were depriving her." Morton details how his octogenarian mother, Tasha—once a sharp-witted New Jersey teacher—slowly lost her memory, and how he and his sister struggled to find her care in the process ("We got the names of people who could supposedly guide us... but it turned out that they too were working in the dark"). Despite Tasha's obstinacy—which only grew as her health declined—Morton describes her antics with measured compassion and gallows humor. Contemplating her last words—"Go to hell.... I hate you"—he crafts an imagined deathbed monologue for Tasha, a single-sentence two-page tour de force that paints her complexities in a humanizing light ("Who I was is just too much for you," she explains). Part gut-punch comedy, part eulogy, this tribute is dazzling.
