If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, a Daughter, a Reporter's Notebook
Faced with the loss of her mother, Suzy, to cancer at sixty, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman longs to find answers to the questions that we all wrestle with after losing someone we love. So she does what she does best: she opens her notebook and starts investigating.\ Thumbing through her late mother's address book, Rosman begins to discover a woman whose life was intricately connected to a host of characters her daughter hardly knew. Her reporting skills at the ready, she...
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Faced with the loss of her mother, Suzy, to cancer at sixty, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman longs to find answers to the questions that we all wrestle with after losing someone we love. So she does what she does best: she opens her notebook and starts investigating. Thumbing through her late mother's address book, Rosman begins to discover a woman whose life was intricately connected to a host of characters her daughter hardly knew. Her reporting skills at the ready, she embarks on a cross-country odyssey, tracking down total strangers from whom she hopes to learn about a woman she once thought she couldn't know better. Venturing into the heart of some colorful communities, Rosman interviews friends and acquaintances of her mother's, as well as people whose relationships with her were more complex though no less potent—among them a former golf caddie, a legendary Pilates instructor, an eBay glass collector, and an immigrant doctor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. As Rosman attempts to fill in the blank spaces that may explain her mother's motivations and philosophies in building a life and in facing death, she comes to understand this woman as she never imagined she could. Blending humor, honesty, and old-fashioned reporting, Rosman grapples with the bittersweet reality that sometimes we can't truly know someone until after she is gone. At once comforting, candid, and very funny, If You Knew Suzy is a heartfelt memoir against which readers can consider themselves and the lives of all those they love. People “In this brave, funny, deeply moving memoir, [Rosman] shows readers how, even after death, love endures.”
1 PMS (Postmortem Shopping) 1\ 2 The Curses (and Occasional Blessings) of Being a Mother to Daughters 11\ 3 To Do: Promise Mom on Her Deathbed I Won't Write About Her Death, Write About Her Death 31\ 4 "…Love Like Your Heart Has Never Been Broken, and Dance Like No One Is Watching" 51\ 5 She Wore Missoni to Her Biopsy 75\ 6 Bed One Rules 109\ 7 Playing Golf at Augusta National, Kindness from Strangers, and Other Impossibilities 149\ 8 The Pilates Proselytizer 169\ 9 Vintage Glass, Fragile and Resilient. Like Mom 213\ 10 The House That Mom Built 233\ 11 The Golf Caddie Carries a Legacy 255\ 12 Ariella 293\ Epilogue 301\ Acknowledgments 303\ About the Author 309
\ People (3 1/2 out of 4 stars)“In this brave, funny, deeply moving memoir, [Rosman] shows readers how, even after death, love endures.”\ \ \ \ \ People“In this brave, funny, deeply moving memoir, [Rosman] shows readers how, even after death, love endures.”\ \ \ Elle“Rosman’s bittersweet search for meaning is compelling and at times hilarious…. These stories are about Suzy but also about a daughter whose compassionate (not to mention labor-intensive) reporting is her way of coping. They memorialize a woman who, even if you didn’t’ know her, begs to be remembered.”\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsWall Street Journal culture reporter Rosman uses her journalistic skills to work through her grief over the death of her mother at age 60 from lung cancer. In the Journal, the author wrote about attempts to better understand her mother through the perspective of those who knew her as a Pilates instructor and a collector of vintage glassware. Rosman is a solid writer and storyteller, and she portrays her mother as entertainingly sharp, even in her excruciating last days. Her reporting turns up some interesting stories. At Sloan-Kettering, where Suzy underwent aggressive surgery, a Haitian-born doctor whose humanity was a touchstone for the family truly understood their struggles-he had lost his own father to a rare cancer just weeks before. As Rosman continued her journey of discovery about her mother, some had doubts about her intentions. At a dinner party she met a man who "thought my premise-to use his term-was bullshit. ‘You're assuming the things you find out about have underlying meaning . . . But really you have no way of knowing what, if anything, any of your discoveries signify.' " The author admits that "he wasn't necessarily wrong," but "if you are open to finding meaning-which is almost always an exercise of faith and almost never an exercise in certainty-you might find meaning." Ultimately, this is not a book for skeptics; it's for readers who see in Rosman and Suzy something like their own relationship with their mother (or daughter), and who might need to be reminded that a mother is a person too. Offers some sweet illuminations, but a bit too light and friction-less for a book on death and mother-daughter relationships.\ \ \ \ \ Elle"Rosman’s bittersweet search for meaning is compelling and at times hilarious…. These stories are about Suzy but also about a daughter whose compassionate (not to mention labor-intensive) reporting is her way of coping. They memorialize a woman who, even if you didn’t’ know her, begs to be remembered."\ \ \ \ \ People“In this brave, funny, deeply moving memoir, [Rosman] shows readers how, even after death, love endures.”\ \ \ \ \ People (3 ½ out of 4 stars)“In this brave, funny, deeply moving memoir, [Rosman] shows readers how, even after death, love endures.”\ \ \ \ \ Gretchen Rubin"After I picked up If You Knew Suzy, I couldn’t put it down. Katherine Rosman’s enthralling memoir presents a tender yet searching picture of a mother’s life, her death, and her lasting influence on her daughters."\ \ \ \ \ (3 1/2 out of 4 stars)\ - People Magazine\ "In this brave, funny, deeply moving memoir, [Rosman] shows readers how, even after death, love endures."\ \ \ \ \ Christopher Walton"More than mere memoir.... Rosman expertly counterbalances the bleak and grinding arc of her mother’s cancer with an inspiring tale of her quietly extraordinary life, and does so with irreverent humor, bracing honesty and the storytelling savvy of a veteran reporter."\ \ \ \ \ Jeffrey Zaslow"Katie Rosman has a great gift for articulating the yearnings of daughterhood and the mysteries of motherhood. Reading her moving tale of discovery, we can’t help but contemplate the things we have yet to learn about our own parents-and about ourselves."\ \ \ \ \ Susan Orlean"Frank, funny, keenly reported, but also deeply moving, Rosman’s book journeys into that mysterious territory-the nature of family and the substance of love."\ \ \ \ \ Janice Lee"Rosman’s voice rings with truth, pain, and hard-won humor. . . . [A] bold, cathartic tale of a daughter’s search to find meaning in her mother’s death. She tells of her mother’s virtues and flaws with unvarnished honesty ... This book beats with a heart of its own."\ \ \ \ \ Sloane Crosley"If Katherine Rosman’s detailed and heartfelt tribute to her mother doesn’t make you want to hug your own, I don’t know what will."\ \ \ \ \ Isabel Gillies"How marvelous to sit beside a daughter exploring her mother’s life. If You Knew Suzy is about the joys of a family balanced by the heartbreaking complexities of death. Rosman is a dogged reporter whose eye for wonderful detail is enriched by the love and empathy of a devoted child."\ \
