Tangled Lives - by Lillian Rubin (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Dr. Lillian Rubin's tenth book examines the lives of women as they grow from daughters into mothers and move on into the intimidating territory of old age. Tangled Lives uses pivotal events from Lillian Rubin's own life-her mother's passing, her own dramatic brush with death, her daughter's illness, and her seventy-fifth birthday-to illuminate the powerful influence the mother-daughter bond has on a woman's identity, and the profound changes that come with aging.

Review Quotes

For baby-boomer women, Tangled Lives is a particular gift, offering rare insight into the lives of our mothers, their mothers, and, through that process, into our own. -Peggy Orenstein, author of Schoolgirls and Flux

"This frank remembrance of a long life by a celebrated writer and therapist yields a tale rich in insights-about immigrant poverty and shame, about language and ambition, about complicated family feeling, and most wisely about growing old." -Alix Kates Shulman, author of A Good Enough Daughter and Drinking the Rain

"Looking backward and forward in life, Lillian Rubin has written a riveting, poignant, and insightful book that will make you laugh and weep at the same time." -Arlie Hochschild, author of The Second Shift and The Time Bind

"With unflinching candor and remarkable narrative grace, Tangled Lives untangles the knotty mess of fear, vulnerability, shame, and resistance that accompanies the aging process. Lillian Rubin's journal precisely and unsentimentally describes the countdown to her seventy-fifth birthday, her 'coming out' as an old woman in this youth obsessed culture, the power of love in her life, and the mother-daughter drama that found resolution in the shadow of her own mortality. A riveting, must-read memoir." -Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author of Getting Over Getting Older

About the Author

Sociologist and psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin (1924-2014) was the author of twelve books, including 60 on Up, The Man with the Beautiful Voice, Tangled Lives, Worlds of Pain, Intimate Strangers, and Just Friends.