Imperfect Endings: A Daughter's Story of Love, Loss, and Letting Go

wonderful book

I loved this book. It was a a page-turner that addressed a serious subject with honesty and humor. I wanted to jump right into the story, have my say, befriend the characters...a tribute to Carter's ability to create a world with her writing. I was truly sad when the book ended, because it meant I had to say goodbye. a great read !

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Exquisitely Written, Invaluable Book

Imperfect Endings is a memoir about a daughter's struggle to support her mother's decision to end her life after years of illness. The author, Zoe Carter, writes with enormous emotional clarity of their family life and the ways in which she cared for her mother in her final days. Carter manages to infuse the pages, which deal with a serious subject matter, with searing wit and universal family stories. This is an exquisitely written, invaluable book for all those who have, or will one day experience, the death of someone they love.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Not to be Missed!

I loved Imperfect Ending - it is an absorbing, poignant and well written book. I love how Carter takes a situation that people tend to deal with in a black and white way and writes about it in a really personal, emotionally nuanced way.

Aside from dealing honestly with the issue of her Mother's decision to end her life, it is also a beautiful mother daughter story. Their relationship changes and evolves as they come to terms with her mother's decision. You come to understand both of them and love them both through the process.

I think it's a successful memoir partly because it reads like a novel. I find with with most memoirs that I lose interest about half way through but this is a story you absolutely stay with till the end. It is insightful, heart warming, and also honest and painfully real at times. Not to be missed!

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

A beautiful memoir whose wit provides a delight unexpected for its topic

I tore through this book. Ms. Carter delivers a portrait of her family moving with grace and good humor through what would otherwise seem an unimaginably wrenching situation. Carter shows great skill in rendering multiple voices of her family members. It was a delight to read.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

She Summoned Death - An Important read

Whether or not one believes the choices this family made in Zoe Carter's memoir, Imperfect Endings, are right or wrong, Carter is an undeniably powerful writer, who has an easy way with words on a complex, but timely issue. She has taken the difficult, to say the least, subject of life and death and crafted it into an unforgettable personal story laced with wit, wisdom, humor, compassion, insight, and abundant food for thought. To be honest, when I first picked it up I wondered if I wanted to "go there." I'm glad I did-I found it incredibly moving.

I know it took more than a little courage for Zoe Carter to write this provocative slice of life. Imperfect Endings meant paring familial façade to the bone and sucking out the marrow, which she did unabashedly.

How does a daughter say, "Yes, Mom, I'll watch you die slowly by your own hand." I'll be a party to your staged sit-in with death.

Hauntingly beautiful are the two words that washed over my soul when I finished reading Zoe Carter's Imperfect Endings. A true page turner, brought together through a dynamic flow of the highs of love and tenderness, and the lows of anger and sadness, revealing what it takes to be, at once, a mother and a daughter.

I could see both sides as the drama unfolded: the mother's perspective, as she desired to make her exit -actually to direct it, while maintaining a modicum of dignity; and the three daughters' reluctance to come to terms with their mother's wishes and say goodbye to Momma. Throughout much of the memoir, a cloak of angry sadness hung from Zoe's shoulders-she was deemed the caretaker, ever flying from coast to coast, always at her mother's beck and call, while growing numb by degrees to her mother's flirtatious and ever changing dates with death. Zoe was the "good" daughter-but also a woman conflicted by daughterly duties over shadowing those of being a wife to a man trying not to lose his patience, and mother to young daughters of her own, needing her attention.

Fluctuating between flashbacks of childhood memories and present day dilemmas, Zoe creates authentic scenes that strip away allusion to expose the raw reality of the family's intimate workings. The three daughters' angst for their parent's past transgressions and weaknesses was palpable, and their reckoning of their mother's pretenses and denial, although heartbreakingly understood, at least by two of the sisters, stayed unresolved.

But, in the final days, as their mother, Margaret, slipped away, the atmosphere rang clear with tenderness and acceptance as Zoe's arms, gently enfolded a feather of a woman as the parade passed by, and songs from her lips sent Momma's soul soaring.

HIGHLY RECOMENDED

Insightful, heart warming, sobering..........these are only three of the many words that I could use to describe this incredible tale told by the daughter of a woman who wants to end her life of pain, in her own way and with dignity Zoe is the daughter who has always been there for her mother but who has never felt that she could meet her mom's expectations. Now her mother confides in her about every little detail of her plan to end her life. Zoe and her sisters do not want this to happen, but they cannot sway her from her plan. Zoe is the one, however, that her mother calls each time she changes her mind or her method. The stress of constantly being at her mother's beck and call, along with the guilt she feels about not always being there for her own family at those times, is wearing her down. A world of memories and the scrutiny of herself that is part of this time with her mom, is making Zoe crazy and adversely affecting her own life. But she cannot abandon her mother. Reading this book as made me take time to think about my own relationship with my aging parents and the part I will play in their future, where ever it will take us.
Zoe Carter has shared an intimate part of her life with us and I thank her for that, and for a book I will read again and again as my own family dynamics change.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED


Reviewer: Elaine Fuhr, Allbooks Reviews

Page-turning account of heart-wrenching dilemma

Zoe Carter is a wonderful writer. She succeeds in creating page-turning suspense throughout this book--even though we all know what the end will be. This is the story of the dilemmas facing the loving daughter of a woman who wants her children to assist her in committing suicide. The reader becomes engrossed with Carter's struggle to find the right way to react during the last few months of her mother's life. We empathize as her feelings shift--sometimes accepting, sometimes rejecting, sometimes opposing and sometimes trying to ease--her mothers steps to take her own life.
For those who are in favor of the principle of assisted suicide, this account of one woman's personal journey underscores the complexity of the issue. At the same time, it surely creates a broader and more sympathetic understanding on the part of those who are opposed to this and other morally-ambiguous issues.

Someone must get this book into the hands of Ron Howard or Penny Marshall, stat!!!

Riveting and intimate, this deeply moving and personal story allows one to escape into another reality. Exquisite depictions engaging all of the senses bestows the reader with the experience of being Zoe, past and present. Pulled in from the first few words and grieving at the last because, alas, it was all over . . . will there be a sequel?! What happened with her mother's caregivers? Her mother's friends? The eldest sister? How is she and her family doing now? I WANT A MOVIE!!! Perhaps a Ron Howard or Penny Marshall movie with Rene Russo playing Zoe Fitzgerald Carter. Thank you so much, Zoe, for putting your neck out and risking personal repercussions on this controversial subject. It is about time for all to see the compassion and unconditional love required in allowing a loved one the dignity to choose their own ending; a dignity we already offer our beloved canine and feline companions.

Lacking in believable emotion

This book was selected in our book group, which consists of myself and 3 sisters. We are all avid readers and intelligent women. Not one of us could relate to the author of this book. It left all of us strangely untouched, and this should have been very emotional. Mostly, we were put off by seemingly indulgent details from the author (such as describing her "toned knees" and "runner's calves") which detracted from the serious tone of the book. The portrayal of the dying mother struck all of us as manipulative and annoying. I think we all ended up siding with the oldest sister who refused to be part of the drama. This book brought up some very timely issues, and that encouraged many discussions, but they centered around assisted-suicide, not this book. I read this book thinking it felt like the point of view of someone in their twenties, not in their forties. It's hard to understand the over-the-top reviews. I won't remember this book this time next year.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Could Not Put This Book Down

I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up Zoe Carter's memoir Imperfect Endings. It tells the story of how her mother asked her to help her end her life and Zoe's subsequent struggles with how to deal with this incredibly difficult request.
Well, I could not put this book down, literally, I was reading through meals and into the night until I reached the very end. I haven't been touched by a book like this in years.

It's really a book about family and the dynamics of family life. Where Carter is so good is in her ability to create such wonderful insight into the relationships between family members by describing what first appears to be a humdrum scene. It charts honestly the relationship between herself and her two sisters through her childhood and then as adults, looks at how their mothers request to die both brings these three sisters together and pushes them apart.

a beautiful book

This is a beautifully written book about a fascinating topic -- how do you respond when a parent wants to end their life? Carter brings a light touch to a tough topic and manages to weave in riveting sub-plots about her warring sisters, her philandering father, and an adolescent eating disorder. Thought-provoking, moving and surprisingly funny. A great bookclub selection!

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