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| Her Last Death: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Susanna Sonnenberg
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy Used: $4.75
You Save: $19.25 (80%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  62 reviews
Sales Rank: 99003
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Scribner Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0743291085
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.29092
EAN: 9780743291088
ASIN: 0743291085
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: LIGHTLY USED copy. NO MARKS INSIDE OR OUT. NICE COPY.
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Amazon.com Review
Susanna's mother gave her a copy of Penthouse when she was a ten-year-old, cocaine when she was 12, and seduced her boyfriend at 14. Sonnenberg recounts "the true calamity of being daughter to this mother." The glory of this memoir is that the author survived her traumatic childhood and somehow navigated her way to a deftly written book capturing her dismantled youth. The daughter of a glamorous, falling-down addict of a mother and a gifted, self-absorbed father, Sonnenberg never falls into the trap of attempting to analyze two people never meant to be parents. Instead, we are allowed to feel the strange and powerful familial currencies running between mother and daughter through the keenly observed writing of Sonnenberg. The writing is razor-sharp and raw, a significant feat considering the untethered early years of this immensely talented writer. --Molly Jay
Product Description
Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why. Glamorous, charismatic and a compulsive liar, Susanna's mother seduced everyone who entered her orbit. With outrageous behavior and judgment tinged by drug use, she taught her child the art of sex and the benefits of lying. Susanna struggled to break out of this compelling world, determined, as many daughters are, not to become her mother. Sonnenberg mines tender and startling memories as she writes of her fierce resolve to forge her independence, to become a woman capable of trust and to be a good mother to her own children. Her Last Death is riveting, disarming and searingly beautiful.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 57 more reviews...
 The best memoir I've ever read. December 14, 2007
56 out of 72 found this review helpful
From the first sentence I was hooked, and I spent the next many hours immersed in a world that is alternatingly horrifying, entrancing, illuminating, and darker than night--much like Daphne, the author's mother and the subject of this book. In the hands of a less accomplished writer, "Her Last Death" could have been a sensationalistic, simplistic shocker, but the prose is so gorgeous and Sonnenberg's control over the material so complete, the book is simply irresistible. One can only hope that this isn't "her last book."
 Warning - There is Much That is Distasteful and Offensive Here March 4, 2008
43 out of 84 found this review helpful
Spoiler alert: There is so much in this book that some of you might find truly ugly, I'm going to have to write a warning review.
I was going along with this story as best as I could manage with all the promiscuous and pointless sex, both from the mother and the daughter. It was shocking and ugly when the mother kept sleeping with the daughter's friends -- although later we find out this may or may not have happened at all.
Then it got very distasteful when the daughter begins an affair with her high school teacher, right under his wife's nose. People get arrested for behavior like this, and the wife, when she finds out, seems to accept it. Women's lib takes a giant step backward.
We have a brief interlude of Susanna sleeping with the same men as her sister, and then she finds her true love, and they get a puppy. Here's where I nearly put the book down for good. The puppy bites so they have it euthanized. Wow, that's brutal, but it gets worse. She gets pregnant, and after one day of pretending they're happy about it and one day of pretending they're going to abort it, the husband votes to abort it and she does it! Even though she doesn't want to! Women's lib takes another giant step backward. Now I am really disgusted. This woman has put down a puppy and a baby within a couple of chapters. Then just a few months later, the husband decides NOW he's ready to be a father. Meanwhile, Susanna gets a part-time job as a counselor at an abortion clinic, so we get to wallow in the misery and horror of that. (So if you believe in saving puppies and babies and not seducing teenagers, you're going to hate this book.)
This is one damaging, nasty family. The mother is a liar, drug addict and nymphomaniac and carries on sexually in front of her two daughters like a latter day Britney Spears, and the daughters turn out no better, except we're supposed to like Susanna at the end when she mothers two little boys, keeps her marriage together, and lives on a budget in Montana. And who cares if she doesn't go visit her mother in the Bahamas after she has a car accident (and incidentally, doesn't die, so I don't understand the title. I wouldn't spend the money to visit her either.)
Sonnenberg is a "writer," and I put that in quotes because she writes like someone trying a little too hard to be a writer. This trashy life is told in overly genteel, descriptive prose and although she realizes this kind of life is not normal, I have a hard time seeing her as a victim, and even now, you can't be sure she believes her own behavior was as ugly as her mother's. If all this was going on in a trailer park instead of luxury New York condos, it'd be just trash.
It almost seems like a B movie, it's so over the top. Even the adulterous history teacher she had the affair with dies a horrible cancer death, like a 1950s movie retribution. I'm not going to be surprised when this does become a movie starring.....who? Too bad Shirley MacLaine is too old to play the mother now.
My other frustration is both mother and the daughters are always judging men on whether they're good in bed, but not once is it explained what the definition of good in bed is. By what standard are they judging? And the three women are positive they are excellent in bed, so terrific, they can get anyone they want...and they do. And I'm not sure how they're doing this either except making themselves absolutely available for sex wherever whenever with whomever. What makes them good lovers? Sonnenberg doesn't share, so you don't even learn a trick or two from this ghastly story. And yes, we have a lesbian episode, too.
So, in summary, if you have problems with any of these topics, don't read this book:
Mothers and daughters sharing lovers
High school teachers seducing their students
Dogs with behavior problems being euthanized
Abortion
Others have done this much better.... January 6, 2008
31 out of 52 found this review helpful
The superlatives in some of the reviews have me shaking my head. Haven't these people read the wonderful, beautifully written biographies and memoirs of the past few years? This book is disjointed, just quick vignettes of abuse (mental, chemical)by unappealing people with no values or common sense. I bought this for our retirement home's library--we have many highly literate, educated, adventurous residents who read all types of books--but I find this book so poorly written and depressing it is going into the Dumpster, not on the shelf. Read Liza Campbell's story! Read Augusten Burroughs! Jeannette Walls! Pass on this one...
Haunting portrait of hell February 11, 2008
31 out of 33 found this review helpful
It's been a long time since a personal memoir stayed with me for so long after I turned the last page.
Sonnenberg is living proof that money and privilege don't insure happiness ... or even a glimpse at normalcy.
Sonnenberg's grandfather was one of New York City's most successful publicity machines. Her father was somewhat of a literary star, especially during the 1960s. He grew up in one of the city's most recognizable mansions, The Fish House, at 19 Gramercy Park South. He had a fling with Susanna's mother when she was 15, got her pregnant and married her when she was 16.
Sonnenberg's maternal roots are just as impressive, even though she changes their names, so we can't Google them for more background. Her maternal grandfather was a successful musician and wrote tunes for the movies. Her grandmother could have been Carole Lombard's twin. After the two divorced, 'Patsy,' as Sonneberg calls her, had houses in Barbados, London and Monte Carlo.
Forget Joan Crawford and the wire hangers. 'Daphne' was addicted to drugs, sex and rock 'n rollers. If Sonnenberg has written the truth, it's a wonder Daphne survived her addiction to morphine, cocaine, Valium and percodan, not to mention her binge drinking. She was hospitalized for mental meltdowns on numerous occasions. She taught Sonnenberg how to give her drugs with needles. When Sonnenberg was 12, Daphne gave the child cocaine, telling her it was important for her to know the difference between quality cocaine and powder that had been "cut," or watered down. Daphne seduced her daughter's boyfriends. She had sex on Daphne's bed at boarding school. She punched her daughter in the stomach, a lot.
And, there was really no one to protect the young, sensitive girl from the maniac that had given her life.
How Sonnenberg ever found her way through the mania to a healthy relationship is a miracle. Now living in Missoula, Montana, with a loving husband and two young boys, she has written a glorious accounting of her time in hell. Her ability to tell her story with a precision-like insight is true testament to the triumph of the human spirit.
Warning: This book is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. Daphne's drug use is just the tip of the iceberg. Until her marriage, Sonnenberg used her sexuality to get what she wanted and to fill the gaping holes in her heart. She was promiscuous. It's a wonder she wasn't an alcoholic or druggie to boot.
I suspect this book will garner a lot of attention come awards season and I'm sure Hollywood will scarf it up, even if the screenplay would have to be rated X.
A MUST READ December 28, 2007
26 out of 31 found this review helpful
This is the most courageous and riveting memoir I've ever read. The author unflinchingly recounts the details of her traumatic and frequently disturbing upbringing. She allows us to see into the life of a financially privileged, yet emotionally and physically abusive family where anything goes. She bravely shares her own darkest moments in her journey to free herself from the pattern of histrionic behavior that has been the norm for her entire life. It is a triumphant and inspiring story of a chronically codependent mother-daughter relationship. An absolute must-read.
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