Kirkus Review
A debut memoir focused on divorce and death.Beginning with her own youth, essayist McColl, the founding editor-in-chief of Yahoo Food, notes that her mother was her "spiritual home," and she venerates her mother on almost every page of the book. Looking back, the author recalls her mother as a colorful mixture of wisdom and sensuality whose role as a mother was perhaps the ultimate aspect of her personality. Her parents' divorce shattered McColl's world for a time, leaving her even more invested in her mother as her basis for stability. The author eventually married, beginning a long road to divorce. McColl's descriptions of her ex-husband do not immediately elicit sympathy; the couple simply drifted apart, the husband toward his career, the wife toward her dying mother. "I loved my husband," she writes, "and then I didn't. Is that a story?" Throughout the book, the author sets her narration against the backdrop of her mother's illness, an era that clearly affected nearly everything else in her life. Her mother's eventual death left McColl with "a roiling grief" so great and traumatic that she even decided against her therapist's suggestion of a grief counseling group: "Someone else might know loss, but no one could understand mine." Though poignant in spots, the book is nearly devoid of hope or significant life lessons; it is ultimately a study in sadness and seemingly relentless unhappiness brought on by chronic grief and relational ennui. As a writer, McColl is introspective and attempts to be inventive, but much of the prose demonstrates an author trying too hard: "The sound of fireworks in the distance. Here, fireflies. I wanted to tie myself up in his arms and he wanted to be the rope."A depressing and often cloying memoir that may hold some appeal for readers in similar circumstances with a penchant for dwelling on heartache. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Written with enough beauty to stop clocks ticking and hearts beating, McColl's season-by-season memoir chronicles her mother's death in lockstep with her marriage's dissolution. All her life, McColl had heard that she was just like her mother. The comparison is equally cause for introspection and a compliment: her mom was the most amazing person she knew. When the cancer her mother handily beat years earlier returns, it's soon clear that it's of a different order. McColl lives in her childhood home for a summer, without her husband, and finds a semblance of control in caring for her mother. One of their commonalities, she realizes, is their delight in small moments, the intrusion of which she welcomes here: "There is one way to slow a story as it speeds toward its inevitable end, and that is to linger in the scene." Feeding her mother elaborate meals in the hope that she won't lose another pound, she seeks her advice on everything from growing a garden to making a life and knows she'll leave the one she made with her husband. McColl's resonant first book is resplendent with love, and the hope she finds in discovering that her unfathomable grief also carved a space for more profound joy.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"Joy Enough" is also a chronicle of illness, loss and the breaking of relationships: "When people say, tell me about your mother, which they never do, I say she was my spiritual home. So to say I miss her... was a polite way of calling myself a cosmic orphan, like a moon whose planet has fallen out of orbit." What's immediately striking about McColl's book is the specificity of what she logs: a "dinner table tight with seven plates of spaghetti," a willow with "maiden hair" like "underskirts across a polished wood dance floor" and the perfume of honeysuckle outside an Italian restaurant. At first, it's disorienting to be presented with detail after detail. But it doesn't take long to find yourself in McColl's rhythm, attuned to the beautiful colors and fragrances and tastes that lodge themselves in our memories. At one point McColl's husband, whom she divorces - it's not exactly a spoiler - says: "Isn't it obvious? You love the small moments, and I love the big ones." What makes a life a story? A writer friend tells McColl, "Story is giving a character a tangible desire, then putting things in her way." "I loved my mother, and she died," McColl says. "Is that a story?" "More tangible," her friend replies. But McColl's argument - that these small moments make up a life, that these small moments are life - is persuasive, and it is presented with humor and charm. This is a book about an extraordinary figure who was a housewife, mother and divorcee. "Introduced at a cocktail party or turning to a fellow dinner guest, she could see the boredom in their eyes when she said she was a mother." The word "mother" doesn't entirely do her justice, and yet that's what this memoir does: does her justice, in more than a summarizing word. "Joy Enough" is divided into seasons: It begins with winter and ends with spring. "I'd like to be buried in a plain pine box like Johnny Olesen," her mother announced. "With a honeysuckle planted on top." "T think honeysuckles are invasive,' I said. 'Good,' she answered, cutting a bite of steak."
Library Journal Review
In this compact memoir, newcomer McColl details her memories of the most amazing person she's ever known-her mother. The author spent a year and a half caring for her dying mother even as her own young marriage fell apart. Through sparse yet shimmering prose, readers will come to know McColl's mother as well: a woman who enjoyed a good sunset, a bike ride, a blooming peony bush. She appreciated life's simple pleasures and encouraged those she loved to do so as well, inspiring McColl to become the kind of woman she wanted to be and face the end of her withering marriage. It is only by wading knee-deep in grief that she learns how to start living again. VERDICT Even though McColl's story fits neatly into the genre of "grief memoir," it is utterly hopeful. An unforgettable debut.-Erin Shea, Ferguson Lib., CT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.