Looking back on family upheaval offers insight and closure in this memoir. When Diane Danvers Simmons was sixteen her mother left her daughter and her second husband to move into the house she rented to a group of male students next door. ‘My Mother Next Door’ reflects on the author’s upbringing, the conflicts between her parents and siblings and the impacts this had on her life and actions as an adult. This narrative is shared honestly, with the author reflecting on disputes and how being caught between her parents made her feel. However, there are lighter moments, dancing around the house singing Diana Ross into hairbrushes with her friends, crushes on her mother’s new housemates to name just a few things that gave strength and allowed teenage Diane to manage. Saying that the book is light-hearted plays down the pain of the experiences shared but there is a strength shown in the author’s ability to look back and share in a way that is candid yet witty. And that this strength has allowed the author to forgive and move on, breaking the cycle of her own mother’s behaviour is in a way cathartic for the reader. An interesting read for those interested in autobiography focusing on family relationships and upheavals.
It’s hardly newsworthy when a man walks out on his family. But it’s rather unusual for a mother to walk out, leaving the father to bring up their sixteen-year-old daughter—and downright scandalous for said Irish Catholic mother to move into the house next door to start a new life with a bunch of hot male students at the age of sixty. No one can accuse Diane Danvers Simmons of telling a familiar story. Instead she offers a wickedly witty, candid, irreverent British coming-of-age story with a fresh take on maternal abandonment. In My Mother Next Door she shares the life lessons learned growing up in the revolutionary 1970s while her narcissistic mother charted her own unfathomable course to independence and freedom. After living in America for decades and becoming a mother herself, Diane journeys back through the madness of her early years, coming to terms with a comical, painful family history, but also celebrating the strength and humor it has given her to face the absurdity of life. In trying to understand what drove her mother to become the woman next door, Diane discovers new respect, love, and even forgiveness: the root of our humanity.
