The Middle Place

This memoir is filled with love, humility, honesty, compassion and a great sense of humor. Well-written and highly readable, the structure pulls you from cover to cover so quickly, it's readable in one sitting. My one sitting happened to be on a long plane ride, however, the time I spent getting to know Kelly Corrigan and her father, "Greenie," along with the rest of Kelly's family, made the plane not only bearable, but also enjoyable. She moved me from tears to laughter to a place of profound contentment. In the Prologue Kelly tells her readers that the one thing we need to know about her is that she's "George Corrigan's daughter." Ultimately, the one thing I believe this survival story is about is how love of family will see you through anything. Even cancer. The Middle Place, according to Kelly, is the place between childhood and adulthood. This takes place for her between August, 2004 and August, 2005, which is the essential duration of the story. By alternating chapters between present and past, this young mother moves the reader from the middle place, a place where she learns she has breast cancer, to her past with stories of her life as her parents' child and her brothers' sister. Because Kelly, aka "Lovey," shares the cancer experience with her high-spirited and utterly lovable father, it makes the middle place that much more complicated and rich. She holds back little and seems keenly aware of her reader. Writing outside herself, she keeps readers in the loop in spite of very personal revelations. She is indeed her father's daughter. A big fan of memoirs, this is one of the best I've read in a long time and I give it my highest recommendation. Michele Cozzens is the author of It's Not Your Mother's Bridge Club

This book is for all of us in that place that has never been defined before. For those who are both a mother and a daughter. It is the story of a family but also the story of a battle. I consider this a must read for every woman who has friends and family battling breast cancer - and for every woman between 25 and 55 - because in so many ways it is all of our stories.

There is that special and floating time when child transitions to adult and Kelly Corrigan aptly takes us there. Corrigan captures the very essence of her family of origin and describes them so well that one begins to believe that just maybe we lived next door. The Middle Place is an uplifting story about life, about the tools needed for survival, an ordinary yet extraordinary true tale. The Middle Place defines the centers of our beings, what makes us tick, what helps us cope and hope, what is truly most important, indeed what makes us human - the bonds of family.

I loved this book. It's a fun, easy read yet thought provoking. I find myself thinking about Kelly, her dad and all the various stories on a regular basis. I've actually gone back and re-read chapters which is a first for me.

I read this book last month as an advanced reading copy and LOVED it. I really related to the "middle place" she refers to, being in between raising my young children and still being a daughter to my own parents. I shed more than a few tears reading this book, but I laughed out loud quite a bit too. I didn't want it to end. I have very high standards when it comes to books (I'm an Ivy League grad and I read a lot) so I don't rate books as 5 stars casually. I immediately emailed 10 friends to go read it. This book reminds me a little of "Eat, Pray, Love" -- totally different subjects, but the candid, well-written, razor-wit memoir style is similar. Just like I felt about Elizabeth Gilbert, I'd like to meet Kelly Corrigan one day. She has that down-to-earth, self-deprecating style that bonds a reader.