Mother's Day 2011: Psycho Moms In Literature

Mother's Day approaches, and with it the usual exhortations to care enough to send the very best. Sure, a handmade card or thoughtful phone call is always appropriate, but if you want to surprise the mother in your life this year, here are some books featuring mothers anyone would love to hate (and hate to love). As compared to the mommies dearest in these pages, almost any woman can feel like Mother of the Year. A frisson of schadenfreude might be preferable to a entire bouquet of roses.

Amy Wilson is the author of When Did I Get Like This?

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"Her Last Death" by Susanna Sonnenberg

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Sonnenberg describes this memoir as "the true calamity of being daughter to this mother." Daphne is a portrait of a Real Housewife gone bad: she gives her daughter a gram of coke for her sixteenth birthday, seduces several of her daughter's boyfriends, and always finds a way to make Susanna take her back and be best friends again so they can do a Cosmo quiz together. Sonnenberg's writing is as raw as it is lovely. When she finally, inevitably, turns her back on her mother, the reader will understand--and only wish she could have done it sooner.

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Sonnenberg describes this memoir as "the true calamity of being daughter to this mother." Daphne is a portrait of a Real Housewife gone bad: she gives her daughter a gram of coke for her sixteenth birthday, seduces several of her daughter's boyfriends, and always finds a way to make Susanna take her back and be best friends again so they can do a Cosmo quiz together. Sonnenberg's writing is as raw as it is lovely. When she finally, inevitably, turns her back on her mother, the reader will understand--and only wish she could have done it sooner.

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This Bad Mom

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

She wasn't THAT bad a mother... Glad this isn't MY mother!

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