Her Last Death

Sonnenberg, Susanna Her Last Death
U.S.A Scribner, New York, NY, 2008
Heart
Borders
$24.00
Autobiographical

The phone rings and Susan is told that her mother is in a coma after being in a car crash, but Susan doesn’t rush to her mothers bedside. Instead, she refuses to, and keeps to her daily routine. The story then unfolds into Susan’s childhood. It was 1966 when Susan sailed to America from England. When she was three, Bob Dylan lived next door. When she was eight, her mother and father got a divorce. When she was ten, her mother told her to read a letter out of a Penthouse magazine. When she was twelve, her mother gave her cocaine and taught her the difference between a drug dealer and a coke head. When she was sixteen she lost her virginity to her high school professor, Mr. Crawford. Susan’s sister, Penelope, is always been there for Susan even though they are constantly under competition. Penelope plays an important role all throughout the novel. Penelope even creates Susan to be more understanding towards her mother, which at times is hard to do.
Her mother, Daphene, is constantly doing things throughout the memoir that causes Susie to fall distant from her mother. Such as numerous times her mother sleeps with Susie’s friends or boyfriends. But when Susan grows up and is living on her own, she realizes that her mother never treated her like a mother should have. When her mother visits her and husband, her mother does nothing but embarrass Susan, which causes Susan to refuse contact with her mother furthermore.
Susanna Sonnenberg uses exciting language that expresses every detail with even more detail. Sonnenberg constantly tugs the reader from the present tense to her daunting flashbacks. I rate this 300 paged memoir with a heart. Sonnenberg’s autobiography seems somewhat outrageous, and at times, it seems like what’s going on could never happen to anyone, but it did, and you can only realize how brave and tolerable Susan was towards her shameless mother.