Read by Tavia Gilbert
7 hours, 29 minutes
Published January 2009 by Hatchett Books
Publisher's Summary:
For Kelly Corrigan, family is everything.
At thirty-six, she had a marriage that worked, a couple of funny, active kids, and a weekly newspaper column. But even as a thriving adult, Kelly still saw herself as George Corrigan's daughter. A garrulous Irish-American charmer from Baltimore, George was the center of the ebullient, raucous Corrigan clan. He greeted every day by opening his bedroom window and shouting, "Hello, World!" Suffice it to say, Kelly's was a colorful childhood, just the sort a girl could get attached to.
Kelly lives deep within what she calls the Middle Place — "that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap" — comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents' care. But she's abruptly shoved into a coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast — and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear. And so Kelly's journey to full-blown adulthood begins. When George, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly's turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her — and show us a woman as she finally takes the leap and grows up.
Kelly Corrigan is a natural-born storyteller, a gift you quickly recognize as her father's legacy, and her stories are rich with everyday details. She captures the beat of an ordinary life and the tender, sometimes fractious moments that bind families together. Rueful and honest, Kelly is the prized friend who will tell you her darkest, lowest, screwiest thoughts, and then later, dance on the coffee table at your party.
Funny, yet heart-wrenching, The Middle Place is about being a parent and a child at the same time. It is about the special double-vision you get when you are standing with one foot in each place. It is about the family you make and the family you came from — and locating, navigating, and finally celebrating the place where they meet. It is about reaching for life with both hands — and finding it.
My Thoughts:
It was this book that first brought Corrigan to my attention and it's been living on my Nook for years now. Just the description of it resonated with me, being in the midst of raising my family as my parents aged. Last year, as I dealt with helping my daughter move and all of the things that my dad was going through, I truly felt like I was stuck in the middle place.
For Corrigan, though, it was so much more. She was not only raising small children (and hoping to have more), while she was trying to help her parents navigate her father's cancer diagnosis; but she was also facing a terrifying battle against cancer of her own.
When my book club read Corrigan's Glitter and Glue last year, I remarked on her relationship with her mother. In that book Corrigan recounted how her mother once told her "your father's the glitter and I'm the glue." This book really shows us why her mother called her father, a man everyone calls "Greenie," the glitter. Everyone loved him and he brought sunshine and deep love into the world. But he was also Kelly's glue, her person. She couldn't imagine a world without him. I know that feeling.
“When he got sick this last time, it was the first time I realized that there will be a day when I will not be able to call him. I will not be able to hear his voice. And I just didn't see that coming. Isn't that crazy?”
And that's the thing with Corrigan. Even as she writes about battling cancer as a young mother while trying to save her father, something most of us will never experience, Corrigan is still able to make her own experiences universal. We've raised children, we've faced situations that changed our lives from what we were expecting, we've had health scares, we've moved, we've reached the point where we felt we were beginning to parent our parents, we've lost a parent. She touches our hearts. But she is so good at storytelling that it never feels overwhelming (although I sure it was) and Corrigan is even able to mix in her wonderful sense of humor, something she clearly got from her dad, the glitter. But that strength she had to get through it, that she got from her mom, the glue.
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