“A sometimes searing, often hilarious account of a mother-daughter relationship Hallmark probably doesn't have a card for.”— ELLEN GRAY, PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS

“Susan Morse’s memoir is wonderfully obsessive and laser-focused on deconstructing the most formative, troubling, infuriating, loving, and pervasive relationship of her life: that with her mother.

“Her mother is a vivid character—spiritually restless, self-absorbed, eccentric, and deeply artistic, and Susan’s epic effort to differentiate herself from the consuming power of this unique woman is every woman’s struggle, but writ large, crazy, and funny. Susan’s narrative voice is free and immediate, and carries us through the stages of her mother’s illness with sharp eye to the surreal aspects of modern cancer treatment. Those details, although deeply personal, strike a universal chord with those of us who have witnessed the last faltering stage of a parent’s life, and she provides a bracing, refreshing perspective.”— ROSANNE CASH, AUTHOR OF COMPOSED

“Just start reading this memoir and you will be hooked. In her portrait of her hilarious and heroic struggle with an almost impossible mother, Susan Morse has captured the mother-daughter paradox like no one else in recent memory. Her stingingly honest portrayal of her aging ‘Ma’ (who, at age eighty-five, takes holy orders as Mother Brigid) is balanced by Morse’s own unflinching look at herself. There’s towering rage, as she juggles Ma’s eccentricities, the nightmare of our healthcare system, communications with far-flung siblings, raising three teenagers, and trying to maintain her own sanity. But exasperation is balanced by a tenacious affection that shines through this extraordinary journey with that most unlikely of outcomes: acceptance, joy, and a hard-won peace between two amazing women. Susan Morse is a writer to relish now, and to watch for in the future.”— REBECCA PEPPER SINKLER, FORMER EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“If you are a person who thought you could not possibly enjoy a memoir detailing the various heath crises of some other person’s mother, I am writing this to tell you that you are flat-out wrong, and that you must read Susan Morse’s sly, smart, moving memoir, The Habit. Morse’s caustic, changeable, demanding, smarty-pants mother is a late-life Sharon Sedaris, had Sharon Sedaris lived and become an Orthodox Christian nun in her eighties, and Morse herself is a crackerjack guide, filling the book with rich anecdotes about her Fitzgeraldian (is that a word?) relations and hilariously describing her many spirals up and down through the American healthcare system, aargh, such as it is. Her imaginary dialogue with an HMO administrator itself is a masterpiece of exposed subtext and should be distributed, pamphlet-like, in the interest of all ailing citizens, throughout the land. Morse also employs the term “crackly-fart,” can you believe it, as a VERB. The minute I read that, I knew I was in very, very good hands.”— CYNTHIA KAPLAN, AUTHOR OF WHY I’M LIKE THIS