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Book Trib’s Melissa Duclos on Ariel Gore’s The End of Eve: “Taking care of our parents, and ourselves”

05 Mar 2014|

In any given year, almost 30% of the U.S. population will be caring for an ill, disabled, or aging friend or family member.” So we are informed by Ariel Gore in her new memoir The End of Eve (Hawthorne Books, March). She goes on to explain: “The typical caregiver, it turns out, is me: An adult female with children of her own caring for her widowed mother.”

Gore is the publisher and editor of the alternative parenting magazine Hip Mama and the author of seven previous works of fiction and nonfiction. Her latest book about caring for her mother is not a how-to. While she beautifully details the turbulent years after her mother, Eve, was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, the focus of the book is not about how to navigate doctors and treatment plans, or manage the logistics or the cost of such care.

There are, of course, logistics, and the costs are high. Gore uproots her life, selling her house in Portland, Oregon, and moving with her young son and partner, along with her mother, to New Mexico, where Eve expects to die in a few months’ time. Everything falls apart after that. Gore’s heartbreaking and humorous account reveals how she balances the resentments borne out of a long and often abusive relationship with her mother with her responsibilities as Eve’s caregiver. In a recent interview, I asked Gore what drove her to write the book.

To read the entire article, go to Book Trib.