Review: How to Forget: A Daughter's Memoir

How to Forget: A Daughter's Memoir by Kate Mulgrew
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Kate Mulgrew's poignant and searing memoir of her parents final years captures a journey most of us will make as adult children. Her account of her stoic, alcoholic father's death from brain cancer, and her mother's death from Alzheimer's disease offer in full details what it's like for families going through these trials of love, in particular when siblings don't quite all feel the same way. Some moments, like that of her father's mistress helping her mother with Mulgrew's dying sister Tessie right up to the funeral (the surprising twists of the strong women of a certain era) or Mulgrew's account of her father's final hours (a brave description), are heartbreaking. But much of the book also brims with the Mulgrew family's brio and Irish humor. It's not unrelievedly dark by any means. A testament to the love of family, "How to Forget" is an altogether finer book than her first memoir, Born with Teeth.

The audiobook, narrated by Mulgrew herself, is outstanding. I do not know how she manages to read some of the passages without audible tears.


I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from William Morrow/HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review.

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