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Her Last Death: A Memoir (Unabridged) | 
 enlarge | Author: Susanna Sonnenberg
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $20.98
You Save: $18.97 (47%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B0011XQOUU
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Amazon.com Review
Susanna's mother gave her a copy of Penthouse when she was a ten-year-old, cocaine when she was 12, and seduced her boyfriend at 14. Sonnenberg recounts "the true calamity of being daughter to this mother." The glory of this memoir is that the author survived her traumatic childhood and somehow navigated her way to a deftly written book capturing her dismantled youth. The daughter of a glamorous, falling-down addict of a mother and a gifted, self-absorbed father, Sonnenberg never falls into the trap of attempting to analyze two people never meant to be parents. Instead, we are allowed to feel the strange and powerful familial currencies running between mother and daughter through the keenly observed writing of Sonnenberg. The writing is razor-sharp and raw, a significant feat considering the untethered early years of this immensely talented writer. --Molly Jay
Product Description
Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why. Glamorous, charismatic and a compulsive liar, Susanna's mother seduced everyone who entered her orbit. With outrageous behavior and judgment tinged by drug use, she taught her child the art of sex and the benefits of lying. Susanna struggled to break out of this compelling world, determined, as many daughters are, not to become her mother. Sonnenberg mines tender and startling memories as she writes of her fierce resolve to forge her independence, to become a woman capable of trust and to be a good mother to her own children. Her Last Death is riveting, disarming and searingly beautiful.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 Having money takes away the sting October 6, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was a difficult book to read. I am not saying its was a bad book it kept interest pretty much throughout. I am not saying this woman was not abused, in some ways yes, but I do not think it warrented a book about it.
the majority of the time the author basked in money, expensive clothes, vactions abroad, and money at her disposal. I am not saying money made it alright, it did not but it takes the sting out of it and there were times when her Mother was kind and decent and cared, she had emotional problems but throughout I never doubted she loved her children very much and gave them pretty much the best money could buy, and yes money does help.
My good friend was a abused beaten child and it was much much more horrific than this sugar-coated book. Her father beat her black and blue with the belt and her three younger siblings, he did NOT drink it was his real true personna he did this cold sober. He locked the kids in closests for hours, even one time in the trunk of a car, he would take them to a dark deserted field and tell them to "get out" because they had done something bad that day {normal kids antic's nothing terrible} he would call them horrible names, chase them around hitting them swearing and worst of all he would, and I will descibe this slowly, make the four kids kneel on their knees on hardwood floor with their arms extended out for an hour, if they lowered there arms they would get backhanded in the face! Back in the 1970's noone cared, it was like "disipline your children as you see fit" neighbors would see the children getting chased around the front yard and never called the police, they were on their own. The mother tried to protect, he never hit her, but failed he was so mean nasty rotten evil noone could stop him, he never sexually abused them, thank God, thats one good thing, but the emotional physical and mental abuse have hurt these kids throughout life, damaged jobs and relationships and has brought on panic attacks, depression and anxiety, this man was truly evil, he is still alive, the mother died young, and is STILL at it, never missing the opportunity to verbally abuse and yell, they avoid him all they can and hate him to this day.
They did NOT have money growing up, lower middle-class, no nice clothes, no expensive vacations, no wonderful caring grandparents who intervened and helped, etc.... they were abused poor and it was terrible, hellish.
My point is other people have had it way harder than this author, she had money and lots of it and yes it takes away the sting, not all together I agree, but it made it easier, just to "fly away to france" or the bahamas when things got bad with the mother and I felt she never actually beat the kids bloody, they survived and they did it rich and had other options. The family I described had no other options, poor and beatup is a horrible childhood, and the fact the father did this cold-sober and did not take drugs makes it worse, it was real, not alcholism related and there were not "presents and disney world vactions" to take away the sting, just more abuse and hatred and to this day it continues, through they are adult and can stay away, I pray one day these children can heal and recover, but his hatred lives on as he lives on at age 70.
NO abuse is good and I am not saying this author had it great because she was so rich, I am saying it took away some of the sting and allowed them more options to leave. No matter how you look at it, money DOES help in everyway, its alot better to have money than not and in this case it helped. I am sorry the author suffered through I don't feel she suffered that badly, and as you read above others suffer SO much more. It turned out good for her good husband, beautiful baby, trust fund, money etc.. she will survive. Perhaps my friend should write a book about her hellish childhood and make lots of money like the author, at least her cries would be serious. The book is good, a good read, but life was not as awful as it seemed for her. Perhaps abused poor children should NOT read it, it makes their situations so much worse being poor.
 Memoir at its best September 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In HER LAST DEATH, Susanna Sonnenberg achieves what I believe the very best memoirs can accomplish. She paints a vivid, living picture, not just of a life but of her relationship with her manic but unbalanced mother, and she does so with prejudice and personal perspective. Memoir is not autobiography; at its very best, the genre tells us not the facts and objective observation of the events. Memoir takes us into the heart of the author's experience, and it is its very subjectivity that gives it power. HER LAST DEATH brings the reader into Sonnenberg's internal world, a tumultuous place where both a mother's love and her sanity are always in question.
Sonnenberg doesn't flinch from the light when it comes to examining her own stumbles and weaknesses, and when an understanding of her troubled mother's psyche eludes her, as it often does, the author doesn't engage in conjecture or armchair psychoanalysis. Instead, she allows us to experience this inexplicable world with her, and in the end, we are left not so much with a sense of who her mysterious mother might have been, but rather whom the author has ultimately become.
In the course of facing a difficult past and its ramifications for her future, Susanna Sonnenberg has shown herself to be an extremely talented writer, and I eagerly await more from her.
 Get over yourself! August 13, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I was very disapointed with this book halfway through. You can't help but dislike the author who seems to have no redeeming qualities. Predictable and self-serving, she seems to think she suffered more than her younger sister whom she abandons in a time of need. Lets hope "Her Last Death" is her last book!
 A well-written difficult story August 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I don't think I've ever read a book where the reviews were so extreme - from those who loved it to those who were quite disappointed. Yes, this is a sexually graphic book. Yes, this seems to be a very honest book. Yes, there are some inconsistencies in the story. However, I was very impressed with the personal writing style. Susanna's acting out as a teen and young adult clearly seemed understandable. How many people who knew her had any idea of what she went though at home? I am glad that she told this story, even though it was quite disturbing at times.
Eh . . . . July 9, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I love memoirs and I found Her last Death to be hard to leave when I had to go to work, but I have a few quibbles.
The book started off wrongly in the preface where the author, Susannah Sonnenberg, warns us that the only "real" character in the book is her; everyone else has a pseudonym and people and events may be composites of characters and situations. That is not the definition of a memoir, in my opinion. Rather, I felt I was reading fiction into which the author had inserted herself. Therefore, I have no idea if what she wrote actually happened as described or if the people she wrote about, including most of all, her mother and sister and her wealthy grandparents, really existed. A memoir, at least since James Frey got reamed out by Oprah, is about real people and real occurrences.
I also must admit I didn't like almost all of the people described in the book, including the author most of the time. Her husband remains a complete enigma (leading me to believe he's boringly normal) but that he doesn't seem to buy into her dramas says a lot about him. Her father has some interesting qualities and more so as his neurological disease has progressed. The mother, of course, is singularly distasteful in almost every aspect and it seems she has similarly doomed the younger sister. Her story is one of rampant, unrepentant child sexual abuse, passive aggressiveness, and deceit intended for no other purpose than to hurt her children in ways I haven't seen anywhere before. Everything she did was so inappropriately perfused with sexuality in dangerous and unspeakable ways. Should the author rear her two sons to be honest, decent, responsible, and loving adults, that will be a monumental credit to her ability to overcome her dreadful family.
If readers discount the story and the people populating it as mostly fictionalized, then they will experience a well-written, fast-moving "novel" about a quite unsettling family they should never hope to meet.
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