Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

240 Pages

Published February 2014 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary:

When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as “Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue.” This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom—with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism—would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting.

But it didn’t turn out the way she pictured it. In a matter of months, her savings shot, she had a choice: get a job or go home. That’s how Kelly met John Tanner, a newly widowed father of two looking for a live-in nanny. They chatted for an hour, discussed timing and pay, and a week later, Kelly moved in. And there, in that house in a suburb north of Sydney, 10,000 miles from the house where she was raised, her mother’s voice was suddenly everywhere, nudging and advising, cautioning and directing, escorting her through a terrain as foreign as any she had ever trekked. Every day she spent with the Tanner kids was a day spent reconsidering her relationship with her mother, turning it over in her hands like a shell, straining to hear whatever messages might be trapped in its spiral.

This is a book about the difference between travel and life experience, stepping out and stepping up, fathers and mothers. But mostly it’s about who you admire and why, and how that changes over time.

My Thoughts: 

Glitter and Glue kicked off The Omaha Bookworms 2023 reading, for two reasons. First, it fit our theme of You Learn Something New Every Month. Secondly, it's a book that's been on my Nook for several years and this gave me a push to read something I already owned. I assumed it would be a book that would give us plenty to talk about. I hadn't anticipated how much everyone would enjoy it, including me. Here's why: 

• Corrigan blends her life in the U.S., her time nannying in Australia and Willa Cather's My Antonia! to explore her relationship with her mother. I really enjoyed how she was able to blend the three together to form a cohesive memoir. Plus, I always give high marks when someone works in a book by a Nebraska author. 
• The title comes from something Corrigan's mother told Corrigan: "Your father's the glitter but I'm the glue." Which really got me thinking (and then asking my book club) which of my parents was which and who played which role in my marriage. 
• I became so emotionally attached to the people in this book, both the Tanners and the Corrigans; Corrigan did such a marvelous job of making me feel what the families felt. 
• So many passages that I've highlighted, that really spoke to me and to which I could relate. Some I'll share here. Some I'll save and do a Book Gems post one day. 

"The living mother-daughter relationship, you learn over and over again, is a constant choice between adaptation and acceptance." 

"...a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day."  

I so often said, particularly of my challenging bookends, that it was a good thing that they fell asleep at night. It allowed me to recharge and to go in and watch them sleep, so peaceful and sweet.  

"I crack open my book, thinking about my mother and the many moments of my childhood when she tucked herself away somewhere, enjoying what she called a party for one." 

It made me think of the times when I felt I had lost control of myself and gave myself a time out in my room. I should have been more like Corrigan's mother and done that a little more often; it's essential for a mother to take some time to care for herself. 

• This passage made me think of the times that my book club has spoken to authors and, when asked a question about their books, had them admit that they hadn't thought of the book in that way but agreed with the idea. 

"I remember a lecture from one of my lit classes about a theory called "Reader Response," which basically says: More often than not, it's the readers - not the writers - who determine what a book means. The idea is that readers don't come blank to books. Consciously and not, we bring all the biases that come with our nationality, gender, race, class, age. Then you layer onto that the status of our health, employment, relationships, not to mention our particular relationship to each book - who gave it to us, where we read it, what books we've already read."

This almost certainly accounts for much of the reason some people love a book while others hate it, why I know that sometimes I have read a book at the wrong time in my life, why I'm able to recommend a book to someone knowing they will enjoy it, even if I wasn't wow'd by it. This one I'm going to recommend to you not just because it's a book I think you might like (because all six of you reading this have your own backgrounds you're bringing to the book), but because it's a book that most women, especially mothers, will be able to relate to and take something from.