Making an exit - a mother-daughter drama with machine tools, Alzheimer's, and laughter.

by Elinor Fuchs

Fuchs celebrates the richness and folly of life and language in this loving and often funny tribute to her nonconformist mother, Lillian Kessler. Born in 1908, Kessler attempted to take the well-paved path of a proper lady twice, first by attending Radcliffe and then by marrying an accomplished, high-society violinist. But she eventually forged her own way, getting divorced, leading WPA projects, entertaining suitors and business associates at lavish parties and ambitiously building the Kessler Corp., selling "spare parts"—all while first abandoning, then raising her daughter on her own. Fuchs, a Yale School of Drama professor, places excerpts of these dialogues, scriptlike, between chapters as interludes that set the next scene and illuminate the inane intelligence of the demented mind. Never mawkish, this is a tender tale of an idiosyncratic, independent woman and her daughter's reluctant love.