Princess Diana meets the Terminator
This heartrending story of a woman’s loss of her mother is filled with unexpected moments of humor, insight, question, all in brilliant prose that occasionally rises into hysterical metaphor.
She wanted revenge for her mother’s death from a botched tummy tuck. It’s an understandable reaction and no one faults her for it. But then revenge was snatched away from her when her mother’s negligent doctor dropped dead.
What to do then? Instead of immersing herself in the doctor’s past, his obituary, his dubious practice, Ms. Lieu then turned to the story of her mother. What emerges is the picture of a strong-willed woman, a female who commanded her relatives and her employees, who was hard working and determined to make a success of her life. She was a force to be reckoned with: a termagant to her husband, a dictator to her children and a terror to the neighborhood kids.
Why does such a woman, who had achieved the American Dream of success (home, marriage, children, career) risk it all on a surgical procedure that’s entirely unnecessary? The author finds she gets no help from her family, quintessential Vietnamese people who maintain a stony silence when questioned about the dead. Far from being a towering myth after she dies, her mother becomes a mystery.
This novel is her attempt to penetrate that mystery and, as the best memoirs do, it’s about the life of a person not the death. Death is eternal but to die is only a moment. It’s the long years before it that must capture the attention. This memoir is therapy, detective novel, comedic stand-up and the story of a lifetime. Susan Lieu’s tale of her deceased mother isn’t one I wanted to read; it’s one I needed to read.
She wanted revenge for her mother’s death from a botched tummy tuck. It’s an understandable reaction and no one faults her for it. But then revenge was snatched away from her when her mother’s negligent doctor dropped dead.
What to do then? Instead of immersing herself in the doctor’s past, his obituary, his dubious practice, Ms. Lieu then turned to the story of her mother. What emerges is the picture of a strong-willed woman, a female who commanded her relatives and her employees, who was hard working and determined to make a success of her life. She was a force to be reckoned with: a termagant to her husband, a dictator to her children and a terror to the neighborhood kids.
Why does such a woman, who had achieved the American Dream of success (home, marriage, children, career) risk it all on a surgical procedure that’s entirely unnecessary? The author finds she gets no help from her family, quintessential Vietnamese people who maintain a stony silence when questioned about the dead. Far from being a towering myth after she dies, her mother becomes a mystery.
This novel is her attempt to penetrate that mystery and, as the best memoirs do, it’s about the life of a person not the death. Death is eternal but to die is only a moment. It’s the long years before it that must capture the attention. This memoir is therapy, detective novel, comedic stand-up and the story of a lifetime. Susan Lieu’s tale of her deceased mother isn’t one I wanted to read; it’s one I needed to read.