Gore - The end of Eve: a memoir

Praise for Ariel Gore

The End of Eve

Ariel Gore has blown my mind twice before with her previous books on motherhood and happiness now shes stunned me a third time with The End of Eve. This is the story of the worlds most insane, beautiful mother who was supposed to die in one year but nearly killed her entire family and staff before she was through.

SUSIE BRIGHT, Author of Mommys Little Girl: Susie Bright on Sex, Motherhood, Pornography, and Cherry Pie

Dorothy Parker famously said there are no happy endings, but Ariel Gores sweet, tough, elegant account of her mothers last days is absurdly happy if happy means inhabiting life in all its mess, distress, beauty, and occasional hilarity. A near-perfect gem.

KAREN KARBO, author of Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life

The depth of insight of The End of Eve often took my breath away. Not to mention its drop-dead humor, the sadness, and the rage. Ariel Gores memoir is in its essence a how-to book. In the face of death, our grief, how to breathe, how to be brave, how to be funny, how to be authentic. How to make it through. But most of all: tenderness how Ariel puts human tenderness on the page is an act of poetry damn close to sublime.

TOM SPANBAUER, author of In The City of Shy Hunters

Ariel Gore takes some of the heaviest life work caring for a difficult, terminally ill parent and somehow through her writing transforms it into a funny, interesting, moving experience. Her work is like origami in that way capable of changing one solid thing into something entirely different, and beautiful, because of the way she looks at the world. Totally unique, and very inspiring.

CORIN TUCKER, Sleater-Kinney

How to Become a Famous Writer Before Youre Dead

One of the snappiest, most useful books a writer for hire is likely to read.

DAVID PITT, Booklist

Hip Mama Magazine

Its the quality of the writing that sets Hip Mama apart.

THE NEW YORKER

Hip Mama is considered one of the best zines out there.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Fun and irreverent.

USA TODAY

Ariel Gores transformation from globetrotting teenager to the hippest of mamas reads like a movie script about a Gen-X slacker following her bliss to unlikely success.

UTNE READER

Atlas of the Human Heart

Oregon Book Award finalist

Gores adventures make absorbing reading.

BETH LEISTENSNIDER, Booklist

A terrific and important book. Ariel Gore rips through the cultural wasteland of the 1980s with fierce desire and female angst, taking us on a wild ride. Impossible to put down.

CORIN TUCKER, Sleater-Kinney

Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness

Thoughtful, funny, and inspiring, Gore is a down-to-earth guide to the elusive human quest for happiness.

JUNE SAWYERS, Booklist

Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City

As rough-hewn and gorgeous as the city that inspired it, this anthology breaks queer ground as it shows us that everywhere is Portland but Portland is its own special place, home to queers seeking and finding home, from the city itself to each others arms.

DAPHNE GOTTLIEB, author of Kissing Dead Girls

The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show

Booksense pick

This novel is a miracle deliciously subversive and deeply spiritual.

GAYLE BRANDEIS, author of Fruitflesh and The Book of Dead Birds

An affecting tale about the search for home, connection, and authenticity.

CHRISTOPHER CASTELLANI, author of The Saint of Lost Things

Piercing and insightful, Gores first novel limns one womans complicated relationship with her religion and her personal faith.

KRISTINE HUNTLEY, Booklist

With a dash of mysticism mixed with the underground freak show scene, Ariel Gore creates a fascinating, inventive, and modern odyssey.

BETH LISICK, author of Everybody in the Pool

Punctuating the narrative with stories of the saints, Gore depicts Frankkas religious reawakening with both irreverence and respect for tradition and faith.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

A bold and imaginative story.

MICHELLE TEA, author of Rose of No Mans Land

Breeder: Real Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers

Forget books that drone on about what is considered normal. Scrap guides and articles that tell you how its done...

SPIKE GILLESPIE, author of All the Wrong Men and One Perfect Boy: A Memoir

The women who gathered in my mothers kitchen when I was a child werent free. The women whose voices are gathered in this remarkable collection are and thats a difference worth celebrating and a development that must be documented.

DAN SAVAGE, author of American Savage

Copyright 2014 Ariel Gore

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage-and-retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gore, Ariel, 1970

The End of Eve/Ariel Gore.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-9893604-1-8

1. Parent and adult child.

2. Mothers and daughters.

3. Aging parents.

4. Mothers Death Psychological aspects.

I. Title.

HQ755.86.G67 2014

306.874DC23

2013017604

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts

2201 Northeast 23rd Avenue

3rd Floor

Portland, Oregon 97212

hawthornebooks.com

Form:

Adam McIsaac/Sibley House

Set in Paperback

CONTENTS

ALSO BY ARIEL GORE

Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness

Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City

How to Become a Famous Writer Before Youre Dead

The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show

Whatever, Mom: Hip Mamas Guide to Raising a Teenager

Atlas of the Human Heart

Breeder: Real Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers

The Mother Trip: Hip Mamas Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of Motherhood

The Hip Mama Survival Guide

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

THE END OF EVE

SOMETIMES I STILL DREAM MY MOTHER ALIVE. SHE startles me awake. Have I left a dirty dish in the sink? Written some offensive story?

In the dream, she steps out of a glass elevator into a crowded market. Im not afraid of her, exactly. Shes already seen me, anyway. So I just hover still like a hummingbird.

She points to her chest as she approaches me. Her skin is translucent like the thin skin of a water blister.

I can see her heart and lungs through that skin. I can see everything.

She squints at me. Touch it, Ariel.

But I dont want to touch it. I know better than to touch it. If I touch it, the skin will break and itll all come gushing out. If I touch it, Ill die soon, too. I cant, I tell her.

She kind of scoffs at that. She says, You were always a coward, Ariel.

But shes lying about that part.

I was a lot of things loyal and drunk and optimistic; full of demons and stories but I was never a coward.

All of this scared me. But I didnt run.

Ill tell you the story.

I MUST HAVE BEEN TEN YEARS OLD WHEN MY MOTHER took me to see Mommie Dearest and then bragged to her friends that Id laughed through the wire hanger scene.