cover image Me & My Mom

Me & My Mom

Marianne Hauser. Sun & Moon, $9.95 (70pp) ISBN 978-1-55713-175-1

In her latest novel, Hauser ( Prince Ishmael ) tells the story of a nameless New York City woman of indeterminate age who broods over her decision to put her elderly, alcoholic mother in the Bide-A-Wee nursing home, which, not coincidentally it seems, bears the same name as New York's Bide-A-Wee animal shelter. While her mother dreamily relives her past, the daughter critically reviews her own. Through the daughter's eyes readers learn about the unsatisfying relationship between the two women--the mother's neglect of her daughter, her preoccupations with the loss of a husband and a son, and her affair with a hairdresser while the daughter was barely into her teens. Still, the daughter loves her mother, and as she guiltily rages about the war against the elderly by nursing home and city officials, the mother briefly gives her keepers the slip. While Hauser's tale is poignant without sentimentality (``For me he is not even a memory, only a flickering image in an antique never-to-be-restored silent film,'' the daughter says of her father) and her use of language engaging, the daughter's politically correct speeches make this novel sound more trendy than sincere. (Nov.)