Scott Simon's Unforgettable is a heartfelt, nostalgic, funny and uplifting celebration of his mother's life. Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, spent his mother's final days with her in an intensive care unit in Chicago, looking back at the life she created for him as a solo parent and working mother.
Patricia Lyons was a glamorous Irish Catholic who married Ernie Simon, an alcoholic Jewish comedian. The suicide of Lyons's mother taught her self-preservation early. When her husband began drinking himself out of jobs and toward an early grave, she left him, determined not to let herself or her son be caught in that spiral.
Working in nightclubs, dress shops and doing some modeling, Lyons created a secure world not only for her son but also for her alternative family of "aunties and uncles"--her circle of tough and funny women pals and gay male friends.
While intermittently detailing the everyday indignities of dying in a hospital, Simon and his mother hopscotch through pivotal and delightfully trivial moments in their life together, remembering numerous gentlemen callers, birthday parties, marriages, jokes and life lessons. Far from depressing, Simon (Pretty Birds) uses precise prose and nimble portraiture to create an inspiring and unforgettable memoir that reassures readers that even the most ordinary life is extraordinary when examined. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant