num_pages: 224
description: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the author of The Middle Place comes a new memoir that examines the bondsometimes nourishing sometimes exasperating occasionally divinebetween mothers and daughters. When Kelly Corrigan was in high school her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as Your fathers the glitter but Im the glue. This meant nothing to Kelly who left childhood sure that her momwith her inviolable commandments and proud stoicismwould be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kellys life which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college armed with a backpack her personal mission statement and a wad of travelers checks she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting. But it didnt turn out the way she pictured it. In a matter of months her savings shot she had a choice: get a job or go home. Thats how Kelly met John Tanner a newly widowed father of two looking for a live-in nanny. They chatted for an hour discussed timing and pay and a week later Kelly moved in. And there in that house in a suburb north of Sydney 10000 miles from the house where she was raised her mothers voice was suddenly everywhere nudging and advising cautioning and directing escorting her through a terrain as foreign as any she had ever trekked. Every day she spent with the Tanner kids was a day spent reconsidering her relationship with her mother turning it over in her hands like a shell straining to hear whatever messages might be trapped in its spiral. This is a book about the difference between travel and life experience stepping out and stepping up fathers and mothers. But mostly its about who you admire and why and how that changes over time.
language: English
title: Glitter and Glue
publisher: Ballantine Books