SOMEONE NOT REALLY HER MOTHER
Mon., May 20, 12:41 PM
Someone Not Really Her Mother is classified as fiction, but it is “not really” a novel. In large print format it is barely 150 pages — a novella maybe?
The central character is Hannah Pearl, a woman in her seventies who lives in a residence for seniors. She has recently been moved from her own apartment into assisted living, as her memory is obviously failing.
In bits and pieces we learn that she was born in France, but her parents sent her to England to work as an au pair, in the hope that she could escape the Nazis. The rest of her French family perished.
In England she found work beyond the family where she started, fell in love, had a child. After Mr. Pearl died — a mystery she never discusses — she brought her little girl to America, where she stayed with a cousin until she went to school and found a good job.
The story follows Hannah not only through her fragmented memory, but also through the eyes of her daughter and granddaughters. She knows that a pretty middle-aged woman visits her often, but does not connect her with the child she raised. She enjoys meeting her granddaughters but confuses them with the aides who care for her now.
Although she has saved letters and journals from her years in England, she does not quite understand the words she wrote. It does not really matter; she knows that there are people who love her, including her little great-grandson, and isn’t that all that matters.
This book was written by Harriet Scott Chessman, and that was why I picked it up at all. I don’t know her, but “Harriet Scott” could have been a name from my family tree. (It is not.) I read that she is from Ohio, but the background here is obviously Connecticut. As a matter of fact, Ms. Chessman taught at Yale and lived in a town just up the pike.
If you look hard enough, you find you have something in common with just about everyone. Ahem.
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