4.5/5 stars ⭐️ Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick, one of my favorites reads of the year.
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"Shrewd, volatile, unlettered, they performed on a Dreiserian scale. There would be years of apparent calm, then suddenly an outbreak of panic and wildness: two or three lives scarred (perhaps ruined), and the turmoil would subside. Once again: sullen quiet, erotic torpor, the ordinariness of daily denial. And I—the girl growing up in their midst, being made in their image—I absorbed them as I would chloroform on a cloth laid against my face."
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This is the 1987 memoir of the complex relationship between Vivian Gornick and her mother. Born and raised in the Bronx, the author narrates pieces of her story over the time, fighting to be independent, struggling for her own consciousness growing up and experimenting the fear of how to become a women in those times. The love for her mother is slowly transformed to a beautiful but sad attachment, this drive the story to a few difficulties and dilemmas that fortunately are not idealized. The writing style is so good and honest, a quick and involving read. Through the memoir you get to read about a few attachments with other people but none of them are as powerful and real like the one she has with her older self, her mother.