Saturday, October 10, 2020

Exit Interview With My Grandmother, by Lily Meyersohn (author, narrator)

Audible Originals, April 2020

Lily Meyersohn is a young, Jewish, gay woman working through her grandparents' relationships, her own queer relationships, her family's Jewish history, and life in a world of endless uncertainty.

For her, one way of doing that is an "exit interview" with her grandmother. It's an intimate, personal conversation, about their family history, the slow loss of Lily's grandfather to the ravages of Alzheimers, and the depth and complexity their marriage had developed before that. Lily also talks about her own relationships, one with a woman who is never identified except as "the woman from Maine," but who was clearly important to her.  Another relationship is with Sophie, which is, as this memoir begins, current, but in various ways clearly moving toward its natural end.

What Meyersohn has to tell us includes not just these relationships, not just her grandparents' relationship, but the stories of how both sides of the family came from Germany to the US not long ahead of the Holocaust, and her own visit to Germany, to places important to her family history.

It's intimate and moving, and revealing and enlightening. A very good listen. Recommended.

I got this audiobook as part of the Audible Originals program, and am revieiwng it voluntarily.

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