Everything My Mother Taught Me {story}

Honestly, Alice Hoffman writes short stories like no one's business. She is the first short story in Amazon's "Inheritance Collection" which looks at five fiction masters reveal that what is past is passed—inside households, across generations, and within the families of our own making. I honestly am not in the mood to read all of the short stories though. I read Hoffman's and loved it and went ehh on the second story and decided to cut my losses at this point. Hoffman's story hits high notes and makes you feel as if you are standing alone with the main character (pre-teen Adeline) in the 1900s in Massachusetts.

"Everything My Mother Taught Me" follows young Adeline who is grieving her father. Her mother she understands does not love show more her and did not love her father while he was alive. Because of the times, the two are forced to go off so her mother can find work as a housekeeper to a set of lighthouse keepers off the tip of Cape Ann. Hoffman describes a desolate place that slowly becomes beautiful to Adeline. Adeline has not spoken since her father has died, but she can see what is happening all around her. And once again she realizes that her mother is only showing one side of herself to others.

I loved this story from beginning to end. Hoffman makes short work of packing punches in her stories. There's a reason why I have read most of her anthology work at this point. She makes you feel as if you are in the middle of nowhere along with Adeline watching how her mother is slowly wrecking another person's life.

I loved the ending and wanted to read more which is all you can ask for as a reader when you get to the end of a very good book, or in this case, short story. show less

I've never read anything by Alice Hoffman before but saw this book listed for free as part of Amazon's Inheritance collection. Wow. I was blown away by how her writing drew me into the story. I found Adaline to be amazing and adorable and strong. She suffered abuse in so many ways, but stayed true to herself and what she believed to be right. Her love for her father was beautiful as was her love and loyalty to Julia. And she contradicts the title of the book so completely - she is everything that she didn't learn from her mother, who was a truly horrid creature. The ending was also one of the more perfect endings I've ever read.

I recently finished a book told by a six year old girl who adored her mother. It was a difficult but uplifting story. Such was not the case with this short story by Alice Hoffman. The story narrated by Adeline commences in her twelfth year. She describes her mother as “ the sort of person who saw only herself and her shadow.” When her father dies, Adeline feels she has lost all the good in her life and ceases to speak from that day forward.

Adeline leads us to discover all the hurt and despair she suffers following her selfish and conniving mother to Thacher Island forty miles north of Boston. Sparsely inhabited it is the home of the lighthouse keepers and their families. Beautifully described it is easy to understand the isolation show more and desolation that encompasses the island’s dwellers. Adeline’s job is minding the younger children while her mother was to help with the cooking, heavy cleaning and laundry. A beautiful, manipulative woman, a man with a roving eye, and the battleground is set.

Hoffman prose is elegant. Her ability to capture the raw emotions of a child used and betrayed is skillful. She has taken a simple story and made it into a many layered treatise of self-indulgence.

Thank you NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for a copy. show less

Review I rather like Amazon's idea of having collections of short stories, written by well-known writers and available as Kindle and audiobook versions.

One of these collections is called 'Inheritance' and focuses on family secrets and their consequences.

When I saw that one of these stories was by Alice Hoffman, I was excited. When I heard the opening sentences, I knew I had to have a copy:
'There are those who insist that mothers are born with love for their children and place them before all other things, including their own needs and desires. This was not the case with us.'
The dispassionate tone of the second sentence was the hook for me, a move into a minor key that says, 'something is very wrong here and has been wrong for some show more time.

So I spent an hour listening to Alice Hoffman's precise prose describing a girl's deep understanding of her mother's loveless nature, her choice to stop speaking after her father's death and her decision, as she comes of age, on how to put a stop to her mother's behaviour and achieve her own freedom by learning one of the lessons her mother taught her: put your own needs first.

Brittany Pressley's narration sets exactly the right tone for the story. show less

I’m not usually a fan of short stories. It takes a rare writer who can produce a complex story in a very small space. As Alice Hoffman shows in Everything My Mother Taught Me, she is one of those rare writers. The characters are three-dimensional,the settings are fascinating, and the story is complete with no empty spaces requiring the reader to make huge leaps of faith to understand it. A definite high recommendation from me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Amazon Original Stories for the opportunity to read this story in exchange for an honest review

An amazing short story, part of the Inheritance collection and available on KU.

Adeline is a twelve year old who decides to stop talking after her adulterous mother Nora shows no signs of changing her behaviour after the death of her husband and Adeline’s father. When her lovers fail to support her, Nora takes up a housekeeping job in a remote lighthouse. But the change in circumstances doesn’t change her behaviour and Adeline, while still quiet, observes the happenings and starts making her own plans.

I don’t want to reveal much of the story beyond this point because it is just a short story and it needs to be read and relished.

This story is set in 1908 and the location is an island in Essex county, north of Boston. The writing show more captures the remote setting and the era well. But even more captivating than the atmosphere is the dynamic of the relationships in the story. Nora’s lack of empathy towards her own daughter is more than compensated by the strong feelings that Julie, one of the keeper’s wives, has for the young girl.

Within just 25-30 pages, Ms. Hoffman develops a masterful story, one that I simply couldn’t keep aside. It has all the hallmarks of a great short tale – a clear plot structure, fluid development, an impactful beginning-middle-end, quick pace, and a perfect ending that doesn’t go over the top.

Well worth the read because it is excellent!

4.25 stars.

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Okay, I'm going to need Alice Hoffman to write a whole novel based on this story because it was FANTASTIC.

It was emotional, raw, and so relatable. Especially for those of us who have toxic, narcissistic mothers.

5 stars because I'm over here dying to read more.

"She would have to do away with herself in order to have a life of her own."