Another Song about the King

Any woman who has ever had a love-hate relationship with their mother will love this book. It's a beautiful and touching story about how different we see a mother's "good" intentions from when we are children to when we become adults. No matter how painful the journey, in the end we see that we all do the best that we can whether we're the mother or the daughter. It brought tears to my eyes.

With compassion, insight and elegance, Kathryn Stern's wonderful debut novel, "Another Song about the King," traces the tensions and fissures between a repressed but talented mother and her daughter, whose own life's experiences sadly reflect the disappointments, resentments and fears felt by her mother. Stern paints a vivid picture of Simone, whose mothering skills mirror the venomous pressures and arid emotional wasteland of her own childhood. Simone is so repressive and begruding of her daughter's right to a life that, at times, it appears that she could not be more deliberate in her emotional abuse. Silvie, in turn, at a very early age, deliberately withdraws from her mother and builds such an anguished anger and sense of disappointment with her circumstances that she refuses to call her mother any other name than Mimi.The central conceit of the novel turns around Simone's teen-age "relationship" with Elvis Presley, a "date" whose scope is never completely determined but whose impact on the dissatisfied Simone grows and distorts her own ability to live as a functional adult. Simone's discontent is the central fact of her life. "For a long time, I liked being married, the routine, the security. But then it was the late sixties...and there I was in the suburbs, just planning a week of dinner and making them." The adult daughter, Silvie (whose own name, incidentally, is a semi-anagram of Elvis), understood "her discontent, the discontent of all women caught between the work of staying home and raising children and the larger work of the world."Stern's masterful talent of characterization reveals itself fully through Silvie, a sensitive and inquisitive child who bears the brunt of her mother's smoldering fury. How should a child respond to a parent who insists the child develop her talents, but once expressed, elicits a competitive anger from the very adult she yearns to please? Silvie decides to withdraw, to finish in second place, to acquiesce to her mother. This tremendously affecting character pushes her sadness "down into that tight little bead no one could see, filling the space with emptiness, nothingness...I feared I lacked a self.""Another Song" is not just about the evolving relationship between a mother and her daughter. This deeply reflective novel also treats the issues of insanity, suicide, depression, divorce, existential anguish and terminal illness. Never forgotten is the humanity of the central characters, and that compassion animates Stern's ability to make even a Simone a character about whom we care. This author, with a sure and sensitive hand, understands the quest all children, regardless of age, have to understand and forgive their parents.

Most mothers and daughters have bumps or strains in their relationships, but Silvie has grown up under the "guiding hand" of an extremely narcissistic mother, whose claim to fame is her purported date (or is it dates) with Elvis. In fact, she confides to her daughter that Silvie is meant to be an anagram of Elvis. The Elvis-date story, in its various permutations, surfaces at several points in the story, and provides the basis for Silvie's mother's ever-present discontent with her suburban life.As Silvie grows up in her mother's bizarre household, she attempts to break away; ultimately, she moves to New York. When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Silvie's world is turned upside down, as she tries to reconcile her relationship with her mother and find out the "truths" and "whys" about her and her mother's life. I don't usually cry when I read books, but the tears flowed around the end.

I just finished Another Song About the King, and I loved it! The ending made me cry. I really enjoyed the mother/daughter dynamic though of course, my own mother would never be difficult in any way. I especially liked the part where the mom dumped the sour cream over the girl's head, and I loved the stories about Elvis. I can see where it would be hard to get over having gone out with young Elvis. I myself own a pair of too small, uncomfortable, blue suede shoes that I just can't bear to part with. I will recommend this book to all my friends with mothers.

"Another Song About the King" is a moving portrayal of the mother/daughter relationship at it's most poetic, heartfelt and compassionate. Simone, a Detroit housewife "who could have been somebody" had she stayed in her native South, is the mother of Silvie, a girl wise beyond her years who has lived her life in the fear that the more potential she shows, the more displeased her mother will be. When Silvie finally breaks free of her mother and moves to New York and her life begins to take off, Simone is struck down with cancer and Silvie must come to terms with a mother, as much larger than life as she is difficult. "Another Song About the King" moved me to tears with writing eloquent, passionate and poetic. The character of Simone reminded me of an Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie" set aginst the backdrop of the sixties. Her credo of "Always order a large" is particularly poignant when the reader takes into account the simple background of the middle class suburb that Simone has found her self in. Author Stern has also shown how a woman of talent and audacity could get trapped, particularly in early sixties America. I loved this book and know that other readers will as well, particularly women. The final chapters are gorgeous. I can't wait to see what characters this young author of such tremendous skill and talent will invent next.