Snapshots

Compiled by Joyce Carol Oates and Janet Berliner, this volume contains literary snapshots from the minds of some of the best women writers today exploring the chemistry between mothers and daughters. In each story the relationship of mothers to their daughters and daughters to their mothers plays a crucial role: a daughter deals with the loss of her mother to, madness; a mother deals with the loss of her daughter to drugs. A mother feels she has given up her life for an ungrateful child; a daughter is forced to see her mother as a person in her own right. This extraordinary and accomplished collection is required reading for anyone who wishes to understand - or simply to remember - both what it means to be a mother and how it feels to be a daughter.