someday ill be in company of all....

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

The praise of motherhood by Phil Jourdan

Title: The praise of Motherhood
Author: Phil Jourdan
Publisher: Zero books
Pages: 136
Price: $ 9.97
ISBN: 9781780992648
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 4 out of 5
Source: Blog tour

Buy Praise of motherhood from amazon.com

Summary:
This book is a son's tribute to the woman who not only gave him life, but helped him live: through various psychotic breakdowns, tumultuous teenage years, and years of feeling out of place in the world.

Review:
Relationship between mother and her child is always a special., no matter what type it could be attributed to..Some lucky share a blissful one, others a marginal one some worse, yet this single relation in life is a defining one for good or for worse...This book is a haunting memoir I would say..Haunting because it raises several questions about the grey shades of life..It left me numb at certain places..I was moving around Phil's home sharing their boxes of discussions with tea along her mother Sophia, becoming a silent member when Phil describes his writings to her, at times pacing fast along Phil in urgency to find out what was going on in his mind...Freudian theory, some interpretations and a lot of philosophy runs through the book characterizing Phil...At places the writing creates a agonizing vibe within the reader when Phil talks fast, screams and feels miserable with his high powered hallucination , he is unable to get rid off..Sophia had a Himalayan task at her disposal .,coping with a difficult son, that Phil was with utter patience and a lot of love, I would say  unconditional love, that kept Phil from falling off  the edge...Phil doesn't literally praise his mother, but it is  evident in every simple act of hers , in every caress and cook of hers, every single meal that she prepared , every single conversation she held with her son...Though a lack of father figure, a hero left him with a void in him, Sophia walked beyond the horizon to help him out and figure out his life himself..
The book is not an absolute page turner nor there are interesting twisting plots, yet it stands apart with Phil's  simple and elegant portrayal of his mother... In Phil's word  she is "Love personified"..For anyone who reads would find this memoir to be heart rendering...After reading the book neither Phil nor Sophia linger around as two characters but as a single phrase with both embedded together.. Sophia's loving call Kiddo too stays on...The book went on to a perfect 5 on 5 in certain places but at certain place it lacked pace , may be that was what intended by the author so that the reader would take things slow ,relishing every word of it, making it a more lovely saga...The numbness in him is obvious after his mother's death and it is evident in his thought..
"Mother was dead but there was still food in her fridge. What do you do with a dead woman’s food? You don’t eat it. That is like eating death itself. I gave it all to the dogs."
I loved this the author's writing for his  pathetic honesty and portraying darker shades of human with ease....Good read stated this to be the most expectant debutante novel of the year and I have no doubt about it..

Note:
I received a copy of the book as a part of blog tour by novel publicity & co, however it has not affected my thoughts about the book in any way..These are my personal thought about the book..

2 comments:

  1. Great commentary on this book VB! That quote about not eating the food is strangely profound. It reminds me of the Catholic concept of eating the body of Christ and transcending death. I wonder if Jourdan intended it to remind the reader of that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great review, VB. I love how you mimicked the author's fluid writing style. This book feels more like real life than anything I've read before--it totally took me by surprise in the best of ways.

    Thank you for joining us on this tour, and please cross-post your review to Amazon and GoodReads to show support for the author. Thank you again :-D

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