Susanna Sonnenberg
Wretched Mother, Retching Daughter, Mesmerizing Memoir
Montana.
HER LAST DEATH: A MEMOIR
By Susanna Sonnenberg
Scribner, 273 pages, $24
Some families bond over photographs or touch football; the writer Susanna Sonnenberg’s precious memories are of puking.
Now in her late 30’s, Ms. Sonnenberg longs for her estranged mother most when “sick with flu or after too much wine with a rich dinner.” During childhood, “when I needed to throw up,” Ms. Sonnenberg recalls in Her Last Death, a mesmerizing new memoir, “Mummy came and sat at the edge of the tub.” This is one of the few times the familial term is used rather than the flamboyant and somehow faintly contemptuous pseudonym “Daphne.”
“I was afraid, but she made it safe,” the author continues. “She kept my nightgown out of the way. … She soothed me and said ‘Almost done.’ … That’s when I had her.” read more »
