Her Mother's Daughter: A Memoir of the Mother I Never Knew and of My Daughter, Courtney Love

Her Mother's Daughter. Ostensibly, the title is alluding to author Linda Carroll's troubled relationship with her daughter, Courtney Love. Courtney certainly is a large force in Carroll's life, but the book is about so much more, about everything there is to do with mothering and daughtering. Linda herself grew up in a strict Catholic household where she was always introduced by Louella as "my adopted daughter." Linda thought her real mother would have loved her more intensely, but at the same time had intense fears that her real mother was a bag lady with no teeth. Linda grew up feeling visible tension from Louella, who couldn't bear children of her own due to botched surgery. When Linda had her daughters Courtney and Nicole, she saw another side of Louella, a side of pure joy and love, and she realized that while Linda will always be "the adopted daughter," the line was blurred when it came to the grandchildren, and Louella loved them like blood. Of course, Linda has another mother out there, a birth mother, and she didn't discover her until well after her adopted parents have passed away. It was the birth of Linda's own granddaughter, Frances Bean Cobain, which prompted Linda to search for her mother. The two slowly formed a relationship via letters (sometimes two or three in one day), and now Paula Fox, the acclaimed author, has fully embraced her lost daughter. She changed all her author biographies to welcome Linda into her life. This memoir is about family lines, finding oneself, self-realization, and the search for spirituality. In it, Linda is able to tell her side of the story of Courtney Love. Linda raised a troubled, angry child in the days when whatever was wrong with a daughter was a reflection on the mom. Many therapists and schools rejected Courtney and told Linda she needed to look at her mothering to solve Courtney's problems. Linda finally realized, when Courtney was a teen, that she had devoted too much to Courtney, neglecting her other children in her unending (and frustrating) quest for approval from Courtney. For anyone who has followed Courtney's career or read the extensive debunking of her own mythology in the Ian Halperin/Max Wallace books, it is fascinating to hear Linda's voice. For example, Courtney claims she was made to sleep in a chicken coop in New Zealand. Seeing it from Linda's eyes, the structure was a labor of love commissioned on the recommendation of Courtney's therapist. All the siblings clamored to be let in, and it pleased Courtney to no end to have her own space on her family's farm. Many of Linda's frustrations with psychologists, schools, and reform schools echo the experience of Deborah Spungen, mother of the Nancy Spungen, notorious girlfriend of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious. Spungen wrote a similar memoir about raising a troubled daughter (And I Don't Want to Live this Life), with all the blame laid on the mother, the repeated rejection from schools and therapists, and the final runa

If you're like me, you would pick up this book in the store with a lot of skepticism. After all, in our "look at me" culture, another tell-all memoir by relations of famous and semi-famous people doesn't exactly sound like the most compelling read. But this book is an absolute suprise, and I'm not even in the ballpark of the right demographic. I'm 27, male, and although I admire very much the work of Paula Fox, I'm not really interested in Courtney, and I find memoir, generally, to be the least interesting literary genre. Also, I'm not interested in therapy or, for that matter, "mothers and daughters," except for my own mother, of course. NONETHELESS. What makes this book so interesting is, for me, that it offers such an interesting portrait of how we come to be who we are, and how we come to know what we know. There's no gratuitious pscyhologizing in Linda's memoir, and it offers instead a rich and nuanced look at her life--not from the "enlightened" point of view of somebody who has Made It or Come Out of the Darkness--but from what is the most neglected perspective in the whole genre: unflinching and unsentimental, a glimpse of a self that has spent a lifetime trying to understand who it is and why. In that respect, it belongs in the tradition not necessarily of the greatest writers (although her mother, Paula Fox, certainly deserves that accolade), but of those just-as-rare writers who manage to contribute a new insight into the condition of being alive. More specifically, it gives what certainly seems to be an honest account of raising a child who alien to you in every imaginable way, a child who curiously displayed all the trademarks of the woman she would become (we have in one anecdote, when Courtney slams her hands over and over on the new piano Linda buys to appease her, perhaps the genesis moment of grunge rock)....As the narrative unfolds, we see Linda as a kind of Forest Gump figure, somewhat naieve at times, but participating in the eras (beatnik 50s, psychedelic 60's, tune-out 70's, narcisstic 80's, and so forth) so commonly falsely mythologized. I would read this book just for the story Linda tells of driving with Jerry Garcia up a one way road on a hill in San Francisco, and then dropping acid with him (her first time) in Golden Gate Park. There are dozens and dozens of vignettes like these in the book, carefully crafted scenes that rival, in my opinion, most of the contemporary fiction writers currently in vogue today. I wanted to hate this book, but I don't. It is an amazing work of art, and a story you just can't make yourself put down.

Linda Carroll has written such a good book I found myself reading the last page over and over because I didn't want the story to end.Each of the era's she descibed had characters that came alive with the flavor of the times, the stodgy fifties, the wild and defiant 60's, the alternative life 70's.Through all the losses in her life she kept finding the next thing to sustain her, and only after she found some peace in herself did she look for and find her birth mother,author Paula Fox. The only criticism I had was that I wanted to hear more about her mother,what it was really like after all the years of fantasizing about her. The last chapter is beautiful,honest, and raw, and I held the book for a long time before I closed it.

Although it starts slowly, Linda Carroll's "Her Mother's Daughter" emerges as a fascinating life story, full of sorrow and grace. Once I got into it I had great trouble putting it down. Her life is a rich one -- child of San Francisco priviledge turned hippie and mother of six, Carroll undergoes a staggering amount of personal loss while dealing with life's usual uncertainties. The fact that Carroll is Courtney Love's mother is really only incidental to the story. The scenes between them are painful to read. I am only vaguely familiar with Love's side of the story, but she does not come off well. I sense this book is not the balm needed to bring mother and daughter back together. Readers will come away hoping they can resolve their problems before it's too late. More inspiring is the reunion between Carroll and her birth mother, Paula Fox. This book has a happy ending of sorts, although we sense it isn't really the end of the story. If you are a fan of "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls you will probably like "Her Mother's Daughter" too. I know I did.

Her Mother's Daughter is compelling , riveting reading. Carroll explores her early life in a thoughtful and honest way, mellowed by a mature understanding. Her writing is fresh, both in wording and imagery. I never had the sense that this even WAS a celebrity tell-all book because it's not so much about Courtney love as about the challenges her mother faced throughout her own earlylife as she struggled to find her own voice and place in the universe. She has clearly succeeded, based on the powerful and insightful voice telling the story. Other equally important characters (besides Love) are San Francisco of the fifties and early sixties, Paula Fox, and the many friends and characters who weave through the narrative with all the life force of the author herself. I highly recommend this page-turner