Mother of Stories
An Elegy
Grief, lies, and death haunt Alice Dailey’s intense, intimate memoir Mother of Stories.
Dailey, a scholar and educator focused on the portrayal of death in historical literature, takes an unusual approach to writing about the effects of ancestral trauma on her life. In a swirling mix of past and present, literature and life, photographs, documents, and snippets of writings, each a weight holding her under waters of conflicting emotions, her narrative recounts her dysfunctional relationship with her mother and how she navigated the months before and after her mother’s death.
A complex, lyrical work, the book issues a cry of grief—if not the kind that can be soothed by warm memories of the departed. Indeed, the book grieves for love that never was, a fact that her mother denied in words but confirmed in actions. Dailey’s mother is remembered as a “daughter of dysfunction and neglect” and a “pathological liar” whose behaviors, stories, and lies caused her to question her own intuitive knowing and undermined her sense of self. After her mother’s death, Dailey discovered a secret that confirmed what she had always intuited: that of all her mother’s children, she alone had been unloved.
The book is a moving testament to the power of a story to create or destroy, and to the power of art to make the unbearable livable. Haunted by a legacy of ancestral abuse, Dailey demonstrates both insight and courage: knowing that her ability to create and to thrive depended on confronting a painful truth, she chooses to face it.
Mother of Stories is a memoir that reveals the generational effects of lies and unhealed wounds.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
