Publisher's Synopsis
Using what is now called autobiographical or narrative criticism, this study looks at a mix of contemporary memoirs in which the death of a parent figures largely, such as Philip Roth's "Patrimony", Simone de Beauvoir's "A Very Easy Death", Art Spiegelman's "Maus", Annie Ernaux's "A Woman's Story" and Susan Cheever's "Home Before Dark". Noting that a parent's death plays a central role in these and other memoirs, it looks at the relations between parent and child, interweaving autobiographical material about the author's own parents' deaths throughout the book.
