Review and Giveaway: What My Mother Gave Me by Elizabeth Benedict

Title: What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most
Author: Elizabeth Benedict
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Algonquin
Publish Date: April 2, 2013
Source: I received a copy from the publisher; however, this did not affect my review.

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You're a non-fiction fan.
• You love reading about mother - daughter relationships.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Women look at the relationships between mothers and daughters through a new lens: a daughter s story of a gift from her mother that has touched her to the bone and served as a model, a metaphor, or a touchstone in her own life. The contributors of these thirty-one original pieces all written specifically for this book include Pulitzer Prize winners, perennial bestselling novelists, and well-known NPR commentators.Joyce Carol Oates writes about quilts her mother sewed that were a comfort when her husband died; Rita Dove remembers a box of nail polish that taught her to paint her nails in stripes and polka dots; Lisa See, daughter of writer Carolyn See, writes about the gift of writing; Cecilia Munoz remembers the wok her mother gave her and a lifetime of home-cooked family meals; Judith Hillman Paterson revisits the year of sobriety her mother bequeathed to her when Judith was nine years old, the year before her mother died of alcoholism.Collectively, the pieces have a force that feels as elemental as the tides: outpourings of lightness and darkness; simple joy and devastating grief; mother love and daughter love; mother love and daughter rage. In these stirring words we find that every gift, no matter how modest, tells the story of a powerful bond."

My Two Cents:

I read this book just in time for Mother's Day and I actually passed on my copy of "What My Mother Gave Me" to my mom. This book is a collection of stories of what each author's mother gave her. Some gifts are tangible. Some are not. They vary from author to author. Some of the stories are happy and some of them are sad but I think that's sort of a normal reflection of the relationships that women have with their mothers. Whether happy or sad, the gifts that you get from your mother are incredibly important. They truly are things that you carry with you for your entire life, which is exactly the point that the book makes.

I really, really enjoyed this book. This is a book that you will want to share with the women in your life. It would make a great gift book for just about any occasion (but do you really need an occasion to share a book??? No way; books are for anytime!!!) So many of the stories really tugged on my heart. A couple of them made me smile. A couple of them made me tear up.

I suggest reading this book story by story. It's hard to stop in the middle of each story as I think you kind of lose momentum that way so make sure that you have time to sit down and read the whole story all the way through. I could see this being a great book to read one story at night or something like that. I feel that some of the stories in this book are definitely meant to be savored a little bit.

Overall, this is a great book!

Giveaway:

Thanks to the publisher, I have two copies of this book to give away! (US only)

  
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