Joy Enough

"I loved my mother, and she died. Is that a story?" Essayist Sarah McColl begins her memoir Joy Enough with that question. In a spare, nonlinear narrative, McColl explores the intertwined narratives of her own life story and that of her mother, Allison. She charts the passionate romances that led them both to unhappy marriages, shares anecdotes of the four boisterous children Allison raised and highlights their shared commitment to seeking out everyday pleasures. For McColl, her mother's example was both frustrating and true, at once a pattern to rebel against and an undeniable north star.

The book's timeline shifts between Allison's college days and McColl's childhood, from their family's roots in western Massachusetts to Texas suburbs and McColl's 20-something life in Brooklyn. Both before and after Allison falls ill, McColl asks many of the same questions her mother asked: What does it mean to be a woman in the world? How much should duty dominate a life, and what role can pleasure play? What happens when the people who formed our foundations leave us? And is it still possible to find joy?

As she faces her mother's life-threatening illness plus her own personal and professional upheaval, McColl takes refuge in small sensory acts: cooking a dry-aged steak, building a fire in a wood stove. She does not arrive at answers to her questions, but eventually she learns, like her mother, to "[swim] against her own sadness." The effect is luminous. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

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