Irma
“A thoughtful, tough and graceful memoir, smooth,
surprising, and affecting.”
— JOY WILLIAMS
“An engaging young widow raises a troubled son, who grows to manhood spiritually redeemed by his wise and self-sufficient mother — compulsively readable and filled with useful truths about our unpredictable lives.”
— THOMAS McGUANE
“More than a beautiful story, Irma evokes haunting emotion from childhood memory to find insight into the bond between mother and son. Precise, stark, elegant, glittering: this book is a diamond.”
— SUSAN CASEY
SINGLE MOTHER, FATHERLESS SON
IRMA THE EDUCATION OF A MOTHER’S SON
TERRY McDONELL
“Clean and moving and beautiful.”
— Susan Minot
“I found myself going slower and slower as the book went on because I didn’t want it to end. Like The Boy’s Life, I won’t forget Irma.”
— MONA SIMPSON
THE EDUCATION OF A MOTHER’S SON
TERRY McDONELL
What passes between a mother and a son is not defined by her love in that moment, but later by the echoes of her motherhood. What did she really do? Her touch. Her courage. No surprise, then, that the more I moved around, got out in the world or just changed jobs, the more I realized how much Irma was still with me. That is what my book is about. — TM
From Irma
When I think of Irma now, I think of her blondeness, and her quick blue eyes, and her white skin, translucent not pale. She had what was called a good figure. She was not vain about it, but she did not hide it either. She was slender with surprising breasts and beautiful legs like the movie stars of the 1940s she was compared to—Betty Grable and Lana Turner. She always felt soft when I was a little boy. Later, I saw the strength of an athlete...
Pensacola, Florida 1942
Duluth, Minnesota 1945
“A In a narrative brimming with vignettes ranging from humorously innocent to painfully melancholy, McDonell chronicles how he grew increasingly appreciative of Irma and her innate ability to overcome her own grief to focus on raising the kind, resilient, morally upright man Bob would’ve fostered himself. A rich and bittersweet portrait of a mother and son spanning miles, decades, and complex emotions.” —Kirkus Review
“rma had grit. I love the love on these pages for Irma, and above all the empathy for her younger self doing the best she could with the hand she was dealt by the war— and life. She grabbed me by the heart.” —Jennet Conant
“Clean and moving and beautiful.” —Susan Minot
“Simply a wonderful book about a son’s memories of his single mother and the life she empowered him to live. A bit of a love letter to California as well. This is the book you didn’t know you needed to read!”—Julie Slavinsky, Warwicks Books, La Jolla, California
“‘You think too much,’” McDonell’s stepfather, whom he detests, once told him when he was a boy. Readers will be glad he does all that thinking, since it has led to this splendid memoir about how his life, as he puts it, ‘braided out of’ his mother’s, the eponymous Irma.” —Michael Cart, Booklist, Starred Review
“Knowing, riveting about raising a son.” —Richard Price
“McDonell’s sentences about work-life, even in a memoir about growing up, are blistered shishito peppers capable of eviscerating an entire profession: ‘He asked the Human Resources VP what she thought it was about the truth that prevented her from speaking it.’ Whoa.” —Paul Bogaards, Kill Your Darlings
“McDonell has the uncanny ability to reflect a child’s view of big and small events unfolding, yet the pentimento of adult empathy and irony glaze lightly over the scenes. Superb writing.” — Shelby Coffey
