Lift

With this intimate book, addressed to her daughters, Corrigan illuminates the joys and the risks of parenthood. Her title metaphor--lift--reveals the inevitable connection between the heady updrafts that help hang gliders soar and the turbulence that inevitably accompanies such thermals. Though Corrigan's voice first strikes the ear as a little flat, even deadpan, it quickly becomes the only voice to read this material. The author handles emotionally wrenching passages with a matter-of-fact steadiness that underlines how the awful pops out of nowhere and makes its home in everyday life. We're never prepared for life's gut-punching events, Corrigan points out, though when they happen, we somehow manage. LIFT will make listeners laugh, cry, and laugh while they cry as they ponder the sacred risks of parenting and love. J.C.G (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

March 1, 2010
Penned as a letter to her two young daughters, the latest from author Corrigan is an attempt to illuminate their particular relationship ("I want to put down on paper how things started with us"), and an ambitious, inspirational meditation on parenthood in general. A slim volume, it perhaps suffers for its brevity but recounts engagingly events like Corrigan and her husband's decision to start a family, and baby Claire's bout with viral meningitis, "the beginning of how I came to know what a bold and dangerous thing parenthood is." She also examines the gifts all mothers hope to present their kids: "a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of a tribe, a run at happiness." Fans of Corrigan's The Middle Place, a memoir of her fight with cancer, will welcome the return of figures like Corrigan's father, Greenie, and should appreciate her wistful but down-to-earth thoughts on parenthood. Newcomers might be less inspired, but should appreciate Corrigan's charm and honesty.