When she was three moths old, Michelle Herman's daughter, Grace, went on a hunger strike. At six, she suffered what can only be described, in the old-fashioned way, as a breakdown. And at the ripe old age of eight, she began a study of the nature of "true romance." Motherhood may come naturally, but it doesn't necessarily come easily--certainly not as easily as it seemed to this mother when she vowed to do a better job than her own mother had. But the real trouble started when Herman decided that "better" wasn't good enough: she would be the perfect mother. A memoir from the front lines of motherhood by a longtime writer of fiction, The Middle of Everything of Everything weaves a daughter's memories of her Brooklyn childhood in the 1950s and 1960s, and the shadow cast on it by her own young mother's paralyzing depression, with a middle-aged woman's account of trying to break her mother's mold by meeting her won child's every need. A story of love of all kinds, of work and friendship (especially best-friendship, its rewards and perils both), of the charms of other people's families, of the miseries and pleasures of aging, and of the twists of the ties that bind each generation to the next, Michelle Herman's book is an energetic, exhaustive, lacerating, unflinching, and often hilarious inside look at the very nature of motherhood.

"Herman writes about the multifaceted experience of parenting with elegance and hard-earned humility. Her memoir first appears to be less about motherhood than about her experience as a daughter and a friend, as she recalls how her mother's depression resulted in her own lonely and isolated childhood, and partly fueled her lifelong quest for perfect friendship and companionship. But the relationship really driving this book is that between Herman and her daughter, Grace, for whom Herman vowed to be 'the mother to end all mothers.' Herman has a restless mind; she's constantly analyzing every aspect of her relationships with other adults, but somehow overlooks the ways in which her total devotion to Grace and her efforts to 'meet [her] every need' would contribute to Grace's inability to individuate from her mother, and lead to a psychological breakdown at age six. With professional help and therapy, Grace emerges from that crisis, but Herman's writing about that period and how her own actions and history contributed to it is poignant and enlightening. 'That sometimes... mothers and their children's needs will be at odds with each other in ways that aren't in the least apparent' strikes Herman, an obviously devoted, insightful and intelligent mother, as a complete surprise, for many reasons rendered clear by the end of this memoir." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

(Clifford Garstang, Rain Taxi Review of Books)

(Mariflo Stephens, Virginia Quarterly Review)

(Kathryn Harrison)

(Amy Bloom)