Muffy’s Year End Best Of List, 2013:
The very best book I read this year (and trust me, I read a LOT of books) is — CLAWS FUCKING DOWN — “The End of Eve” by my friend, the unfathomably brilliant writer, Ariel Gore. It was absolutely breathtaking. You know how you always hear people say they picked up a book and could NOT put it down for anything? YEAH. This is that book. I was intoxicated with it while reading it, and absolutely DRUNK with it for weeks after I was done. I read it whilst playing official house mama for a night at the Baby Goat’s sorority house — and I kept pausing and reflecting on how a sorority house is probably the LAST place on the planet that one would read such a book, yet there I was, and it was PERFECT. The best part? This is a memoir about a woman taking care of her difficult, dying mother…and what I am about to say is not hyperbole in the least:
There are parts in it where I have NEVER, EVER, EVER laughed so hard in my entire life whilst reading a book. EVER. Explosive, trying not to wake my slumbering daughter lying next to me, BELLY SCREAMING OUT LOUD kind of laughter. In a memoir about death. Now, that is GREAT WRITING.
It has been described as “Terms of Endearment” meets “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.”
AND, FUCKING HOW.
“The End of Eve” is a memoir about Ariel’s END OF TIMES with her STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL, NARCISSISTIC, EPIC, MYTHICAL, MISBEHAVING, MEDUSA OF A MOTHER…and how Ariel stepped up as reluctant caregiver for her while she was dying of lung cancer a couple of years ago, despite people telling her, “Are you OUT OF YOUR GOTTDAMNED MIND? You don’t owe that crazy, abusive old biotch SHIT.” My favorite quote of Ariel’s regarding her very ethical and decent decision to play deathbed nursemaid to the woman who — when Ariel came out to her many years ago…proceeded to fill her daughter’s Christmas stocking with nothing but photographs of her boyfriend’s penis, and then shrieked in the light of morning like she’d done it by mistake — is:
“I may have raised myself. But, I raised myself right.”
And, boy, did she. This is SOME book and Ariel Gore is SOME broad and SOME writer.
Apparently, “The End of Eve” is not widely available until March…but you can preorder NOW. And in the meantime, visit her website, buy her other books, and join me in supporting the relaunch of the groundbreaking, game-changing publication that she created, “Hip Mama: The Parenting Zine” — covering the culture and politics of alternative parenting. Get this: The magazine is widely credited with launching the contemporary mothers’ movement. Yes. This is THAT Ariel Gore.
In closing, I will now give this book the absolute highest, grandest, truest accolade that one writer can give to another:
Goddamnit, I wish I’d written that.
http://hawthornebooks.com/catalogue/the-end-of-eve
muffy bolding 