RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksZauner has brought her masterful songwriting skills to bear in the delicate prose of her memoir, the story of her artistic coming of age and a portrait of her mother’s extraordinary life and early death due to cancer. She deftly braids the story of her mother Chongmi’s life with her own ... the motifs braided into Zauner’s memoir carry us through both the buoyant and sorrowful chapters, helping us make sense of how the pieces fit together. A compelling and authentic story of grief has to have moments of joy to give it meaning, to give purpose to the life of the person who died. Zauner’s narrative craft shows us what is at stake: avoiding the urge to \'co-opt something so vulnerable and personal and tragic for a creative artifact\' and instead faithfully documenting the greatest and most influential person in her life ... carries on the legacy of Michelle Zauner’s mother, and in doing so achieves what the greatest works of creative nonfiction strive to do: the writer transforms the wreckage, and is herself transformed in the process.
