Product Description

"The Middle Place is about calling home. Instinctively. Even when all the paperwork -- a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns -- clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter." For Kelly Corrigan, family is everything. At thirty-six, she had a marriage that worked, a couple of funny, active kids, and a weekly newspaper column. But even as a thriving adult, Kelly still saw herself as George Corrigan's daughter. A garrulous Irish-American charmer from Baltimore, George was the center of the ebullient, raucous Corrigan clan. He greeted every day by opening his bedroom window and shouting, "Hello, World!" Suffice it to say, Kelly's was a colorful childhood, just the sort a girl could get attached to. Kelly lives deep within what she calls the Middle Place -- "that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap" -- comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents' care. But she's abruptly shoved into a coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast -- and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear. And so Kelly's journey to full-blown adulthood begins. When George, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly's turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her -- and show us a woman as she finally takes the leap and grows up. Kelly Corrigan is a natural-born storyteller, a gift you quickly recognize as her father's legacy, and her stories are rich with everyday details. She captures the beat of an ordinary life and the tender, sometimes fractious moments that bind families together.Rueful and honest, Kelly is the prized friend who will tell you her darkest, lowest, screwiest thoughts, and then later, dance on the coffee table at your party. Funny, yet heart-wrenching, The Middle Place is about being a parent and a child at the same time. It is about the special double-vision you get when you are standing with one foot in each place. It is about the family you make and the family you came from -- and locating, navigating, and finally celebrating the place where they meet. It is about reaching for life with both hands -- and finding it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9094 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-08
• Released on: 2008-01-08
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Newspaper columnist Corrigan was a happily married mother of two young daughters when she discovered a cancerous lump in her breast. She was still undergoing treatment when she learned that her beloved father, who'd already survived prostate cancer, now had bladder cancer. Corrigan's story could have been unbearably depressing had she not made it clear from the start that she came from sturdy stock. Growing up, she loved hearing her father boom out his morning HELLO WORLD dialogue with the universe, so his kids would feel like the world wasn't just a safe place but was even rooting for you. As Corrigan reports on her cancer treatment—the chemo, the surgery, the radiation—she weaves in the story of how it felt growing up in a big, suburban Philadelphia family with her larger-than-life father and her steady-loving mother and brothers. She tells how she met her husband, how she gave birth to her daughters. All these stories lead up to where she is now, in that middle place, being someone's child, but also having children of her own. Those learning to accept their own adulthood might find strength—and humor—in Corrigan's feisty memoir.
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Cynthia Kaplan, author of Why I'm Like This and Leave the Building Quickly
"Kelly Corrigan's utterly absorbing memoir, The Middle Place, is wry, smart, and often heart-wrenching. Corrigan takes us down memory lane and then, at the same time, down some other, darker road most of us hope never to travel. Yet we follow her all the way, quite willingly, thanks to her sharp eye and her great sense of humor."

Carolyn See, author of Making a Literary Life
"Kelly Corrigan takes what might have been a fairly standard story of survival, and reframes it, most charmingly, as a coming-of-age narrative. We see here a headstrong girl, under the most severe adversity, turn into a genuinely strong woman."

Customer Reviews

Loved this book
I loved reading this book. I read it nearly straight through, as it is very accessible, like talking to the author. The main reason I think we should all read it is that it gives an up-close and candid look at the trauma of breast cancer in one woman's life, allowing us the language to face directly-- verbally -- what faces women with breast cancer.
The strength of the book is in its look at one honest woman's experience lived within a very close family and the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and the system as a whole in dealing with the onset of radically unexpected breast cancer. She does a fantastic job of getting at the implications for one's sense of security, one's inability to protect the people we love. I like the way she takes on the mundane banalities of worrying over looks and diet, how ordinary everyday shallow, thoughtless talk shared between friends becomes really hard to tolerate in the face of the hugeness of this assault on one's body and spirit,etc. And the lonely breakdowns, where really no one can enter.

This is a passionate book. I loved its intimacy, its directness, its vignettes where terror enters, and where love takes over.

Thank You Kelly!!!!!!!
My husband and I both were diagnosed with cancer this past holiday season in 2007. We, like Kelly and Greenie share a wonderful bond of love and understanding that only two know. There are several years between my husband and I, so I could relate to that bond between Kelly and her Father. Like the Corrigans were also survivors of that dreaded "C" word that plagues so many today. Her book touched me in ways that I cannot describe. I cried, I laughed and I wished that I was part of her family at times. I hope she finds the time to entertain us with more heartfelt stories. Please, Kelly keep writing your families stories. I love them. Thank for the therapy you gave us it was the best money I ever spent.

a pleasant surprise
i bought this book without knowing much about it. i had only read other amazon reviews and they were all positive. cancer is not something i love to read about--my mom had it recently, my best friend had it 7 years ago, and i had it also--but i figured i would give it a try. to my surprise, this book was so much more than a book about cancer. it was a great memoir with colorful, real characters who truly came to life in the author's stories about growing up a Corrigan. i read through this book in a few hours because i couldn't put it down. it's a great summer read.