Product Description

Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why.

Glamorous, charismatic and a compulsive liar, Susanna's mother seduced everyone who entered her orbit. With outrageous behavior and judgment tinged by drug use, she taught her child the art of sex and the benefits of lying. Susanna struggled to break out of this compelling world, determined, as many daughters are, not to become her mother.

Sonnenberg mines tender and startling memories as she writes of her fierce resolve to forge her independence, to become a woman capable of trust and to be a good mother to her own children. Her Last Death is riveting, disarming and searingly beautiful.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6298 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Amazon.com
Susanna's mother gave her a copy of Penthouse when she was a ten-year-old, cocaine when she was 12, and seduced her boyfriend at 14. Sonnenberg recounts "the true calamity of being daughter to this mother." The glory of this memoir is that the author survived her traumatic childhood and somehow navigated her way to a deftly written book capturing her dismantled youth. The daughter of a glamorous, falling-down addict of a mother and a gifted, self-absorbed father, Sonnenberg never falls into the trap of attempting to analyze two people never meant to be parents. Instead, we are allowed to feel the strange and powerful familial currencies running between mother and daughter through the keenly observed writing of Sonnenberg. The writing is razor-sharp and raw, a significant feat considering the untethered early years of this immensely talented writer. --Molly Jay

From Publishers Weekly
Sonnenberg's curse is her beautiful self-centered and crazy mother, who lies continually, does drugs and navigates through the world with sex as her sole point of reference. Her father is cold and distant. Add in abundant family money, and you have the story of a young girl who grows up in a world of privilege, abuse and despicable behavior all around. Readers get a good dose of drug use, foul language, manipulative behaviors, an accounting of Sonnenberg's affair with her high school English teacher and one chapter titled Sex with Everybody. The freelance writer's story is titillating, and her writing is strong and clear, though the power is diluted when she blurs the lines of nonfiction: I have conflated or changed some events and dialogue, and created occasional composites. Readers not bothered by the conceit will likely follow along through the outrageous and nasty operational tactics of Sonnenberg's mother until the story line leads to her redemption. (Jan.)
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Review
"Her Last Death recounts 'the true calamity of being daughter to this mother,' and the wonder of this memoir is that the author survived her traumatic childhood and found a way of turning her memories into a fiercely observed, fluently written book...Writing in sharp, crystalline prose, Ms. Sonnenberg... plung(es) readers into a sort of perpetual present tense in which we are made to experience, almost firsthand, the inexplicable and perverse behavior of an impossible woman from the point of view of her aghast, bedazzled -- and immensely gifted -- daughter."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"An irresistible book that is shimmering with life and the portrait of a glorious, frenzied, seductive woman who of necessity has been left, along with Susanna Sonnenberg's young womanhood, behind. Her mother."

-- James Salter, author of Last Night and Burning the Days

"Riveting, sexy, smart, and brazenly honest, Her Last Death is a memoir that demands and rewards total immersion. I couldn't put it down, didn't want to, and was sorry when it was over. Susanna Sonnenberg is a wonderful writer, and this is a marvelous debut."

-- John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road and Claire Marvel

"Her Last Death is an emotional thriller. It is a manual for men and smart, searching individuals of any age or economic levels. For most of the book it is a disturbing story, yet at the end you might feel like cheering. It is a beautiful, beautiful book and I plan to give it to my nearest and dearest."

-- Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes and Teacher Man

Customer Reviews

Eh . . . .
I love memoirs and I found Her last Death to be hard to leave when I had to go to work, but I have a few quibbles.

The book started off wrongly in the preface where the author, Susannah Sonnenberg, warns us that the only "real" character in the book is her; everyone else has a pseudonym and people and events may be composites of characters and situations. That is not the definition of a memoir, in my opinion. Rather, I felt I was reading fiction into which the author had inserted herself. Therefore, I have no idea if what she wrote actually happened as described or if the people she wrote about, including most of all, her mother and sister and her wealthy grandparents, really existed. A memoir, at least since James Frey got reamed out by Oprah, is about real people and real occurrences.

I also must admit I didn't like almost all of the people described in the book, including the author most of the time. Her husband remains a complete enigma (leading me to believe he's boringly normal) but that he doesn't seem to buy into her dramas says a lot about him. Her father has some interesting qualities and more so as his neurological disease has progressed. The mother, of course, is singularly distasteful in almost every aspect and it seems she has similarly doomed the younger sister. Her story is one of rampant, unrepentant child sexual abuse, passive aggressiveness, and deceit intended for no other purpose than to hurt her children in ways I haven't seen anywhere before. Everything she did was so inappropriately perfused with sexuality in dangerous and unspeakable ways. Should the author rear her two sons to be honest, decent, responsible, and loving adults, that will be a monumental credit to her ability to overcome her dreadful family.

If readers discount the story and the people populating it as mostly fictionalized, then they will experience a well-written, fast-moving "novel" about a quite unsettling family they should never hope to meet.

Mummy Dearest
Reading this book, the story of Susanna's upbringing and early years of marriage and motherhood, was like reading someone's diary. Her Last Death is the intimate purging of an extraordinary life with Mummy--perhaps one of the most unfit and reckless characters ever to raise children. What's remarkable is that Susanna not only lived to tell the tale, but also ultimately seems to have turned out to be quite "normal." She has certainly realized her potential as an educated and talented writer.

It's the good writing that got me through this quick read. It certainly wasn't the subject matter. I kept asking myself, uh--WHY am I reading this? It had a definite Mommie Dearest revenge factor thing going for it, but the author's love for her mother came through as well, as she struggled to find herself while standing in an overwhelming shadow. I think it made me appreciate my own childhood, and marvel at the power we have over our children in mapping out the world for them.

The mother she names "Daphne," (the author makes it clear in the front notes that all names but her own have been changed), is in a word, outrageous. Living a sexy, single-girl life with two baby girls in tow, she consistently puts herself, along with her drug and sex addictions, ahead of the responsibilities of motherhood. From a daughter's eyes, the reader senses Susanna's conflict of love and betrayal as she bestows the horrendous details of her childhood. Namely, her mother's constant offerings of cocaine and alcohol to the adolescent Susanna, parading an endless line of lovers through their apartments and hotel rooms, her need to seduce each and every one of Susanna's friends (particularly the boyfriends), and explaining orgasm and introducing birth control when her daughter was hardly beyond puberty. It made me feel both sick and very sad.

Susanna divulges several of her own poor choices on the way to her life, as well as her initial struggles with motherhood. She may not be the most likable character walking the roads of Montana; however, due to the way she was raised, she has evoked this reader's sympathy. Overall, I found this to be an interesting and unique memoir and would enjoy reading future work by Susanna Sonnenberg.

Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.

her last death
excellent book, keeps you wanting to stay up all night long just to finish it.