What should have been left in therapy. . .

A few weeks ago, I read - what I believed at the time - a fascinating book review on Mary Gordon's "Circling My Mother." It went so far as to state:

"What's inspiring about "Circling My Mother" is Gordon's deeply personal portrayal of her mother. Anna Gagliano is not someone who feels she must have large ideas about what's wrong with Catholicism. Instead, like those famous midcentury Catholics, Gordon's mother attends to the nourishment of her own particular religious vocation, a vocation less glamorous than Merton's and Day's but no less divine — a vocation as a single mother, as one afflicted by polio, as a woman in full belief of the love of God." (NY Times: Darcey Steinke / Family Blessings / Published: August 26, 2007)

Which leads me to think I 1) either purchased the wrong book or 2) I'm missing a few chapters that highlight the above. Rather, Mary Gordon's memoir of her mother, her mother's friends, her mother's sisters, her mother's priests, is dreadful and largely mean-spirited.

And to think I purchased a hard-cover edition.