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Praise for THE MIDDLE OF EVERYTHING

Honest, brave, and humbling, Michelle Herman's account of striving to become the mother her child needs-one very different from the ideal she'd imagined-is the story of every woman dedicated to sparing her child the pain of her own youth.  We want to believe that love doesn't make mistakes, but Michelle Herman knows the truth: like water, love assumes the shape of the vessel, always imperfect, that holds it.

The Middle of Everything is honest and ugly and funny and beautiful in places where one would not even hope for bearable. Fine writing and the sure, gifted voice of the storyteller prevail, even as this family does.
 

        ...and from Publishers Weekly:

Herman writes about the multifaceted experience of parenting with elegance and hard-earned humility. Her memoir first appears to be less about motherhood than about her experience as a daughter and a friend, as she recalls how her mother's depression resulted in her own lonely and isolated childhood, and partly fueled her lifelong quest for perfect friendship and companionship. But the relationship really driving this book is that between Herman and her daughter, Grace, for whom Herman vowed to be "the mother to end all mothers." Herman has a restless mind; she's constantly analyzing every aspect of her relationships with other adults, but somehow overlooks the ways in which her total devotion to Grace and her efforts to "meet [her] every need" would contribute to Grace's inability to individuate from her mother, and lead to a psychological breakdown at age six. With professional help and therapy, Grace emerges from that crisis, but Herman's writing about that period and how her own actions and history contributed to it is poignant and enlightening. "That sometimes... mothers and their children's needs will be at odds with each other in ways that aren't in the least apparent" strikes Herman, an obviously devoted, insightful and intelligent mother, as a complete surprise, for many reasons rendered clear by the end of this memoir. (Mar.)
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Public parking for the Wexner Center is available at the Ohio Union garage on High Street near 15th Avenue on the OSU campus.  The Wexner Center is just north of the garage.  Exit the garage on foot through the doorway that leads north onto campus; the Wexner Center will be the first building you encounter (and is easily recognizable by its permanent scaffolding and its turrets).

                                                             Also due in March 2005 from Michelle Herman: Dog, a short novel

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