If You Knew Suzy
A Mother, a Daughter, a Reporter's Notebook
By Katherine Rosman
(Harper, Hardcover, 9780061735233, 320pp.)
Publication Date: May 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback
Categories: Parenting - Motherhood, Personal Memoirs, Women
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Faced with the loss of her mother, Suzy, to cancer at sixty, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman longs to find answers to the questions that we all wrestle with after losing someone we love. So she does what she does best: she opens her notebook and starts investigating.
Thumbing through her late mother's address book, Rosman begins to discover a woman whose life was intricately connected to a host of characters her daughter hardly knew. Her reporting skills at the ready, she embarks on a cross-country odyssey, tracking down total strangers from whom she hopes to learn about a woman she once thought she couldn't know better. Venturing into the heart of some colorful communities, Rosman interviews friends and acquaintances of her mother's, as well as people whose relationships with her were more complex though no less potent—among them a former golf caddie, a legendary Pilates instructor, an eBay glass collector, and an immigrant doctor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. As Rosman attempts to fill in the blank spaces that may explain her mother's motivations and philosophies in building a life and in facing death, she comes to understand this woman as she never imagined she could.
Blending humor, honesty, and old-fashioned reporting, Rosman grapples with the bittersweet reality that sometimes we can't truly know someone until after she is gone. At once comforting, candid, and very funny, If You Knew Suzy is a heartfelt memoir against which readers can consider themselves and the lives of all those they love.
A staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Katherine Rosman has written about popular culture for The New Yorker, the New York Times, and Elle magazine. A native of Michigan, she lives in New York with her husband and two children.
?eoeAfter I picked up If You Knew Suzy, I couldn?e(TM)t put it down. Katherine Rosman?e(TM)s enthralling memoir presents a tender yet searching picture of a mother?e(TM)s life, her death, and her lasting influence on her daughters.?e
-Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
?eoeIf Katherine Rosman?e(TM)s detailed and heartfelt tribute to her mother doesn?e(TM)t make you want to hug your own, I don?e(TM)t know what will.?e
-Sloane Crosley, author of I Was Told There'd Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number?
?eoeRosman?e(TM)s bittersweet search for meaning is compelling and at times hilarious?e?. These stories are about Suzy but also about a daughter whose compassionate (not to mention labor-intensive) reporting is her way of coping. They memorialize a woman who, even if you didn?e(TM)t?e(TM) know her, begs to be remembered.?e
-Elle
?eoeHow marvelous to sit beside a daughter exploring her mother?e(TM)s life. If You Knew Suzy is about the joys of a family balanced by the heartbreaking complexities of death. Rosman is a dogged reporter whose eye for wonderful detail is enriched by the love and empathy of a devoted child.?e
-Isabel Gillies, author of Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story
?eoeMore than mere memoir.... Rosman expertly counterbalances the bleak and grinding arc of her mother?e(TM)s cancer with an inspiring tale of her quietly extraordinary life, and does so with irreverent humor, bracing honesty and the storytelling savvy of a veteran reporter.?e
-Christopher Walton, Detroit Free Press
?eoeIn this brave, funny, deeply moving memoir, [Rosman] shows readers how, even after death, love endures.?e
-People (3 ? out of 4 stars)
?eoeRosman?e(TM)s voice rings with truth, pain, and hard-won humor. . . . [A] bold, cathartic tale of a daughter?e(TM)s search to find meaning in her mother?e(TM)s death. She tells of her mother?e(TM)s virtues and flaws with unvarnished honesty ... This book beats with a heart of its own.?e
-Janice Lee, author of The Piano Teacher
?eoeFrank, funny, keenly reported, but also deeply moving, Rosman?e(TM)s book journeys into that mysterious territory-the nature of family and the substance of love.?e
-Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief and The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup
?eoeKatie Rosman has a great gift for articulating the yearnings of daughterhood and the mysteries of motherhood. Reading her moving tale of discovery, we can?e(TM)t help but contemplate the things we have yet to learn about our own parents-and about ourselves.?e
-Jeffrey Zaslow, coauthor The Last Lecture
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