Hafner has experienced more than her fair share of life’s sorrows, and though at times I was moved to tears, she doesn’t dwell on misery. In this moving and honest account of her attempt to share a home with her troubled mother and teenage daughter, she goes beyond the present day story. Ever the journalist, Hafner delves into her family’s past for important context and insights. She’s painfully honest at times, and doesn’t flinch even when it comes to her own failings, but there’s a sympathetic wisdom here about dysfunctional families that makes her own so relatable. This book is about parents who -- for one reason or another -- cannot give their children what they need. And the children who continue to wish and hope for that elusive nurturing, even into adulthood. Hafner portrays her mother both truthfully and with compassion, as a woman out of her depth, who suffered as well as wounded. The memoir is a coming of age of sorts, of relinquishing the child’s view of a black and white world in favor of one that is nuanced and complex. Well worth the read.

This was a believable memoir, and I think it was honestly written. It was interesting to watch the "me" mature.

Slow moving depressing story about repressed anger over an alcoholic mother.

An honest portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship in complete disarray.

I found the Mother and the author to be thoroughly unlikelable! I could not identify with either.

What a bunch of disagreealbe people!

The narrative is choppy, sometimes diffucult to follow.