This debut book is a touching memoir of growing up as the only child of "not just a strict single parent, but something different. Something to be cautious of." Liz Scheier, a former editor at Penguin Random House, reveals the many ways her mother, Judith, was Never Simple, and the singular parent-child bond that endured through this fraught relationship.
It's reassuring to realize the author is alive and well; her opening chapters reveal the bizarre, even abusive, behavior she survived in 1980s Manhattan, where her "retired" mother, vague about Scheier's father, orchestrated their "secluded life in the center of a massive city." Scheier eventually realized Judith had borderline personality disorder, explaining the "whole fake world" she created. In a compelling, even humorous narrative ("Kids scattering like spiders in front of my mother when she strode into the school"), Scheier parallels her life story--itself a fascinating journey to career, marriage and motherhood--with her mother's erratic existence. Scheier illustrates how a child can not only heal from trauma, but evolve into forgiveness. As Judith's charisma failed to keep creditors from her door, and as "mental illness was... vying with dementia," Scheier had to make decisions for her mother's care. In poignant, often horrific and darkly funny ways, she describes "the fraying hemp of the last ropes tying me to her creak to their breaking point." Yet in a heartfelt conclusion to Never Simple, Scheier hopes she can "let the good stories surface and the bad ones sink for good," remembering her mother as "flawed, but well-intentioned." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.