Who Killed Mom?
A Delinquent Son's Meditation on Family, Mortality, and Very Tacky Candles
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Memoir, biography, and outrageous comedy make for a perfect blend in the debut book from acclaimed writer Steve Burgess. Telling the tale of his mother's life and death, and along the way laying bare his own life and struggles, Burgess renders a memorable and deeply moving meditation on life and family.
The author's mother, Joan, barely survived her thirteenth birthday: a rare disorder had made it almost impossible for her to swallow food. Her battle to survive this illness was the first in a lifelong sequence of courageous confrontations with her upbringing. As she raised her five children, Joan revealed herself to be a strong and remarkably complex woman. This is her story, but it's also the story of her husband, a charming United Church minister, and their children-including the alarmingly delinquent Steve, who spent much of his adolescence and beyond dropping acid, drinking to excess, and getting in trouble with the law. Which leads him to wonder: was he responsible for his mother's ills and perhaps even her death?
Whether he's relating how an ice cream product saved him from a gruesome death on the Trans-Canada, or sizing up the rebranding efforts of a woeful Manitoba motel, or depicting daily life
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this witty and compassionate debut, Canadian broadcaster Burgess examines the life and death of his mother, Joan, and his own supposed role in her demise. At her deathbed, Burgess ponders how he could be responsible for her deterioration, since, "Generally speaking, important people do not simply expire...Surely her husband took years off her life...Then there are the children. None had motive, but all had opportunity and time to make it look like natural causes. Damning evidence is easy to find." Indeed, Burgess provides plenty of it the youngest of five children in a family of "Christmas fundamentalists" with a "malevolent force" of a grandmother who left lifelong scars on Joan's psyche, Burgess was a hell-raiser. With impartial veracity, he muses about his experiences with drugs and alcoholism (and resultant prosecution), potty training trauma, and delinquent friends, all set against his mother's lifelong emotional and physical struggles, and the realities and everyday heartbreak of elder care. Though clearly not responsible for his mother's death (who suffered from thyroid problems and Parkinson's), Burgess honestly highlights the great ruthlessness of familial love, and the power of humor and storytelling to cope with life and death.
