Name: The Center of the Universe
Price: 15.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Nancy Bachrach
ISBN: 9780307455413

The story is so improbable, it can only be true: A brilliant woman with a long history of mental illness—who once proclaimed herself to be “the center of the universe” — is miraculously cured by accidental carbon monoxide poisoning aboard the family boat. Nancy Bachrach warns readers, “Don’t try this at home” in her darkly humorous memoir about “the second coming” of her mother — the indomitable Lola, whose buried family secrets had been driving her crazy.

Aching and tender, unflinching and wry, The Center of the Universe is a multigenerational mother-daughter story—a splendid, funny, lyrical memoir about family, truth, and the resilience of love.

“Distinct and haunting. . . . Bachrach has channeled some of her mother’s madcap energy into a darkly comedic style that recalls David Sedaris. . . . Dazzling.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Bachrach is one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read, period. Make room on the shelf next to Sedaris, Eggers, Wilsey. Our new bad boy of memoir is here, and she’s middle-aged, mildly manic, and, my God, we’ve been waiting a long time for her.” —Alexandra Fuller, author of The Legend of Colton H. Bryant and Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight

“If there’s a black-comic angle, Bachrach will find it. . . . Bachrach’s book—unsentimental and all the more moving for it—is ultimately about a universal condition: the renegotiation of the adult child’s relationship with her parent.” —The Austin Chronicle

“[Bachrach’s] acidly funny exasperation, her palpable pain, her volatile mixture of love and loathing for what her parents put her and her siblings through feels genuine. And it makes for riveting reading. . . . By the time the book ends, love has conquered chaos, tenderness flows like a healing balm and Lola’s insistence that she is the center of the universe doesn’t seem so crazy after all.” —The Hartford Courant

“You couldn’t make this up. . . . A hilarious account of [Bachrach’s mother’s] recovery . . . from ‘permanent, irreversible’ brain damage.” —The Boston Globe

“Hard to put down: This zany family memoir is the ultimate mother-daughter story.” —Rhode Island Reads

“Every once in a while you come across a memoir that resonates so true to your life that you think, ‘If I were only as witty and charming, I could have written that!’ Even if you are lucky enough not to over-identify with Bachrach’s completely crazy mother, you’re bound to be moved by this terrific book.” —Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

“Dad’s dead, Mom’s comatose: All you can do (mostly) is laugh.” —Newsday

“A fascinating blend of dark humor, stark reality and crisp writing.” —Tucson Chronicle

“That [The Center of the Universe] is harrowing isn’t surprising — but that it’s shockingly funny is.” —More

“A delightful memoir of a family’s response to a bittersweet tragedy. . . . Readers will rejoice with the family about the medical miracle that is Lola while laughing about the relative normalcy of a somewhat dotty senior citizen who decorates with frames still displaying the store photos, pitches her walker in a trash bin, and changes light bulbs in her underwear and heels. Readers will also end up loving Lola, and wishing they had a lunch buddy who can tell a funny story like Nancy.” —Curled Up With a Good Book

“[A] sparkling memoir. . . . Vivid and vibrant. . . . Filled with wit and humor. . . . An eminently successful portrayal of a family, effectively combining cleverness with banter and grief with farce to demonstrate the close linkage between comedy and tragedy” —The Jewish Chronicle

“Of the many ways to deal with a father’s sudden death and a mother’s injury and madness, Nancy Bachrach chooses breezy comedy. Like the best of the stand-ups, she pushes the wisecrack and irony to the outer limits in this smart, fast-paced family memoir of disaster.” —Alix Kates Shulman, author of To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed

“The Center of the Universe is a beautifully written symphony of lunacy and hilarity. Nancy Bachrach has the comic touch.” —Robert Klein, author of The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue

“Provides an honest look at mental illness, family, and true love.” —Charleston City Paper

“Marvelous. . . . A 5-star memoir of a difficult subject.” —Armchair Interviews

“Nancy Bachrach is a sharp observer of all around her and has a piercing ironic humor that serves as a dearly needed life preserver. The Center of the Universe is one of those stories that grabs you by the throat and leaves you proud of our capacity to survive and laugh and enjoy.” —Anne Roiphe, author of Epilogue: A Memoir

Q: You worked in advertising. For how long? We’re all imagining three-martini lunches a la Mad Men. Was this your experience?
A: Before I got into advertising, I taught philosophy, but I was barely a chapter ahead of my class, and it didn’t take me long to realize I wasn’t serious enough for academia. A friend suggested I try advertising because it was “a business of ideas.” That sounded like fun, and it was, even though the ideas were mostly small. I worked on everything from denture adhesives to Star Wars, and during my thirty years in the business, I did witness a few liquid lunches. But if I’d drunk my way through them, I wouldn’t have remembered enough of my career to write about it. That said, I may have had a martini or two on the way home at night.

Q: Was there a moment in your advertising career where you thought to yourself: “I want to write a book”?
A: The idea was anything but sudden—writing a book about my mad, brainy mother was a compulsion that began in kindergarten. I started taking notes the minute I learned the alphabet, and before that, I drew hieroglyphics that got me sent to the school nurse. I finished my first draft while I was working full-time by writing before dawn, during vacations, and in my sleep. The only way I could forget my crazy job was to refocus on something more lunatic.

Q: The dream of most people is to write the great American novel, yet you chose to write nonfiction. Why?
A: Truth is stranger than fiction. My mother’s madness—and the freak accident that altered her personality and killed my father—were wilder than my imagination. To get to the bottom of an incredible story, I thought that fact would be a better route than fiction.

Q: Where does the title come from? Who or what is the center of the universe?
A: My mother was the self-proclaimed “center of the universe,” a fact she declared when I was about ten. She was very convincing—brilliant, bigger than life and charismatic—but she was intermittently unhinged. We were in our old Chevy when she made the pronouncement, and she was twirling her fingers in dainty arcs, demonstrating the rotation of the solar system around her, right there in the front seat. She was the axis of a magical orbit—spinning, spinning—and I rotated around her.

Q: Perhaps the most surprising thing about your memoir, given the subject matter, is how funny it is. Have you always been able to laugh at the dysfunctions in your family—if I may call them that—or is this the gift of hindsight?
A: I had some outrageous material. To paraphrase a famous quote, laughing well is the best revenge. It certainly beats self-pity.

Q: Was the process of writing this memoir painful? Cathartic? Did you feel like it had to be done?
A: “Catharsis” is the right word. I won’t say that writing purged my feelings about my childhood, but it transformed them. The first draft erupted from me like a volcano. I had misgivings about writing anything so honest it would be cruel, but by the time I completed the second draft, the anger was gone, and it was replaced by understanding and forgiveness.

Q: You write in your Author’s Note: “Memory is so fragile that even perspective can distort it but this is a work of nonfiction, mostly about my mother.” How much of THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE is true?
A: This story is as “true” as memory can be. I transcribed dialogue and incidents that were seared in my brain during childhood, but we’re not exactly disinterested observers of our own lives, and the passage of time airbrushes whatever we call “reality.” Telling a chaotic story in an orderly manner mutates it—since life is messier than prose. But no non-existent apple was thrown over a metaphorical fence.

Q: Are there any favorite anecdotes about your mother that got lost on the editorial cutting room floor?
A: There’s enough material about my mother for a sequel and a bad cookbook. And I cut most of the prequel— the stories about her ancestral psychodrama, which resembled the chapter headings of a psychiatric manual—from Aunt Flossie’s vapors to Aunt Lily’s neurasthenia and Aunt Annie’s dipsomania. Uncle Larry (a sociopath?) was a jailed judge, Uncle Bill an assassin at large, and their nephew embezzled from the mob. What kind of people embezzle from the mob?

Q: What do you hope readers of THE CENTER OF UNIVERSE will take away from the book?
A: Most families have their share of dysfunction, although mine is admittedly over the top. I hope readers will take away hope. No one should be counted out while they’re still breathing, even if they’re breathing on a ventilator. The brain is resilient, and despite what one well-meaning doctor told me, hope is never “counterproductive.” No one has a crystal ball.

The Center of the Universe

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Success!

By Nancy Bachrach