Glitter and Glue

Glitter and Glue
by Kelly Corrigan

Genre:  Memoir
Pages:  240
Published:  2/11/14 by Random House
Format:  Advanced Reader's Copy

My rating:
4 out of 5 stars





I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book through Library Thing.

Glitter and Glue is a memoir written by Kelly Corrigan about mothers and daughters and what she understands about her relationship with her own mother. When Kelly travels to the other side of the world and becomes a nanny to a family in Australia who recently lost their mother, she learns to see her strict and seemingly overbearing mother in a new light.

This memoir is not what I expected, though I still enjoyed it. I knew it was about Corrigan's relationship with her mother. However I was surprised that there was very little live interaction between Kelly and her mother in this book. Most of what we learn about their relationship is told through flashbacks and Kelly's own observations. Yet it still worked. I think it is very true for many of us that we don't truly appreciate our mothers until we are away from them or until we are acting as mothers ourselves. Then, when we start seeing how much we act like our mothers now, so much about the way our mothers acted then begins to make sense.

Corrigan makes some keen observations about this throughout the book, and her style of writing was easy to read and enjoy. At first I was a little frustrated that the book ended, because I felt like so many loose ends were left untied. But the epilogue helped to answer some of my questions about Corrigan's current connection to her friends in Australia. And I would like to read Corrigan's other memoir, The Middle Place, to find out more about her struggle with cancer and how her mother played a role in that.

If, like me, you enjoy reading real stories about mothers and daughters, you should definitely add this one to your list.