Fierce Attachments

The first selection for our Phinney by Post subscription service is a book I hadn't opened until a couple of months ago, but after reading just the first two pages I was pretty sure I had found Book #1. In middle age, Gornick was still reeling from the "shrewd, volatile, unlettered" women—her mother most memorable among them—who raised her, and her memoir, published in 1987, is a thrilling and enlightening negotiation between their vivid influence and her own hard-won independence. We've loved sharing it with subscribers near and far, and we're looking forward to her follow-up memoir, The Odd Woman and the City, which comes out in May.