Faced with the loss of her mother, Suzy, to cancer at sixty, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman longs to find answers to the questions that we all wrestle with after losing someone we love. So she does what she does best: she opens her notebook and starts investigating.
Thumbing through her late mother's address book, Rosman begins to discover a woman whose life was intricately connected to a host of characters her daughter hardly knew. Her reporting skills at the ready, she embarks on a cross-country odyssey, tracking down total strangers from whom she hopes to learn about a woman she once thought she couldn't know better. Venturing into the heart of some colorful communities, Rosman interviews friends and acquaintances of her mother's, as well as people whose relationships with her were more complex though no less potent—among them a former golf caddie, a legendary Pilates instructor, an eBay glass collector, and an immigrant doctor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. As Rosman attempts to fill in the blank spaces that may explain her mother's motivations and philosophies in building a life and in facing death, she comes to understand this woman as she never imagined she could.
Blending humor, honesty, and old-fashioned reporting, Rosman grapples with the bittersweet reality that sometimes we can't truly know someone until after she is gone. At once comforting, candid, and very funny, If You Knew Suzy is a heartfelt memoir against which readers can consider themselves and the lives of all those they love.
In A Nutshell: Suzy was an amazing person and her daughter Katherine's account of life with her mom is a cross between childhood and womanhood. When we are daughters we are always our mother's child. No matter how old. Katherine writes to remember and to tell a story. The details are heartbreaking and knowing that it is a true story makes it that much more painful. However, the beauty of this legacy is one of the most moving memoirs I have ever read filled with love, humor and memories. Katherine's honesty and candor can not be ignored as she searches to find meaning in the loss of her mother and her life as a daughter.
What I Can Tell You: As a grown child who lost her mother to Cancer. I knew this was going to be a hard book for me to read. What I wasn't prepared for was the beauty in which the story of Suzy would be told. Katherine writes with such eloquence, that I longed for the relationship I never got to have with my mother while appreciating the one Katherine was lucky enough to have with hers. I read this book from cover to cover in 3 hours, sitting at the table while I should be cleaning but unable to close the book.
Thank you to Harper Collins for the opportunity to read If You Knew Suzy.
You can pre-order the book which will be released on April 20th by clicking the Amazon link below. If you order through Amazon from my site I will receive a "very small" commission.
Thanks so much for sharing this book review with your readers. This sounds like this would make a great book club selection for my sorority.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a beautiful book. I immediately thought about you when I read this reveiew. Since you can relate to the chracter. Definitely a book I must read.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a sad story in some ways, but a beautiful one as well. Great review!
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