Editorial Content for Never Simple: A Daughter’s True Story of a Mother’s Made-Up Life
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Reviewer (text)
Growing up, all Liz Scheier had was her mother. In the New York City of the 1970s and ’80s, Judith Scheier was both traditional and eccentric. Known always as Mrs. Scheier, never just Judith, she raised Scheier in an observant Jewish household and had high expectations for her only child. But she was also temperamental, strange and mysterious. And, as Scheier recounts in her affecting memoir, NEVER SIMPLE, her mother was a pathological liar who most likely suffered from a set of mental illnesses that made their home and relationship frightening and unpredictable.
It is true that Judith was a lawyer, but beyond that, Scheier knew little about her mother’s life. She didn’t work, and their source of income was never quite clear. However, in the days of rent-controlled New York, this was less of a conundrum. There seems to have been little record of Scheier’s own early life: her mother failed to file paperwork and often forged what she needed. Scheier was told that her biological father died before she was born and that her mother, surprisingly, remembered little about him. She had his name, Warren Steven Livingston, and not much else.
"Scheier’s debut is heartbreaking and compelling. The writing is insightful and candid, and the style is crisp and frank, threaded with both an aching sorrow and a droll perspective."
While Scheier wondered about her father, her life was consumed by her mother. Judith was mercurial and antagonistic, lashing out at strangers and school administrators alike. Scheier knew Judith kept some secrets, and as she got older, she began to realize that much of what her mother told her and others were lies. There were some constants in Scheier’s life: a couple of family friends, Hebrew school and Jewish rituals. There was also a lack of honesty.
As time goes on, Scheier grew more suspicious of her mother’s stories and less tolerant of her abuse, but she remained powerless to get to the truth or assert emotional independence until young adulthood. Even then, what she learns is not always satisfying. The revelation --- or partial revelation --- of some of Judith’s secrets is a key aspect of NEVER SIMPLE, so there will be no spoilers here. But the overarching themes are related to the wrestling that Scheier does within her relationship with her mother.
Judith was not just unusual; it becomes apparent to readers, and eventually to her daughter, that she was not well. While she was often boastfully proud of her daughter and a fierce (if unhelpful) advocate for her, behind closed doors, Judith could be emotionally and physically abusive to Scheier. Leaving for college gave her much-needed distance and perspective, but then Judith’s health deteriorated. By the end of her life, she went from shutting herself in her apartment to being homeless, forcibly evicted after years of refusing to pay her rent. Her former beauty and elegance were lost, and much of her persona of a sophisticated and educated woman was tarnished by her anger, paranoia and erratic behavior.
Even at a distance, Scheier finds herself struggling against the dangerous storm that was her mother, conflicted about how much responsibility she should take for her and how much Judith should be allowed around Scheier’s young children. It is an impossibly devastating situation, one that is recorded here with honesty and a deft gallows humor.
Scheier’s debut is heartbreaking and compelling. The writing is insightful and candid, and the style is crisp and frank, threaded with both an aching sorrow and a droll perspective. The relationship between Scheier and her mother is complex and complicated, and Scheier doesn’t shy away from her frustrations or anger. What begins as an exploration of identity as she searches for the truth about her father ends up being a rumination on trauma and maternal love.
The book’s subject matter is charted territory, but Scheier sets her own course here. NEVER SIMPLE is a worthwhile contribution to the library of stories about dysfunctional families, survival and compassion.
Teaser
On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Liz Scheier was 18, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of. And second, that the man she had claimed was Liz’s dead father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up --- his name, the stories, everything. Now, decades later, armed with clues to her father’s identity --- and as her mother’s worsening dementia reveals truths she never intended to share --- Liz attempts to uncover the real answers to the mysteries underpinning her childhood. Trying to construct a “normal” life out of decidedly abnormal roots, she navigates her own circuitous path to adulthood: a bizarre breakup, an unexpected romance, and the birth of her son and daughter.
Promo
On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Liz Scheier was 18, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of. And second, that the man she had claimed was Liz’s dead father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up --- his name, the stories, everything. Now, decades later, armed with clues to her father’s identity --- and as her mother’s worsening dementia reveals truths she never intended to share --- Liz attempts to uncover the real answers to the mysteries underpinning her childhood. Trying to construct a “normal” life out of decidedly abnormal roots, she navigates her own circuitous path to adulthood: a bizarre breakup, an unexpected romance, and the birth of her son and daughter.
About the Book
This gripping and darkly funny memoir “is a testament to the undeniable, indestructible love between a mother and a daughter” (Isaac Mizrahi).
Liz Scheier’s mother was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and --- when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued her --- a masterful liar. On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Scheier was 18, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of. And second, that the man she had claimed was Liz’s dead father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up --- his name, the stories, everything.
Those big lies were the start, but not the end; it had taken dozens of smaller lies to support them, and by the time she was done she had built a fairy-tale, half-true life for the two of them. Judith Scheier’s charm was more than matched by her eccentricity, and Liz had always known there was something wrong in their home. After all, other mothers didn’t raise a child single-handedly with no visible source of income, or hide their children behind fake Social Security numbers, or host giant parties in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment only to throw raging tantrums when the door closed behind the guests.
Now, decades later, armed with clues to her father’s identity --- and as her mother’s worsening dementia reveals truths she never intended to share --- Liz attempts to uncover the real answers to the mysteries underpinning her childhood. Trying to construct a “normal” life out of decidedly abnormal roots, she navigates her own circuitous path to adulthood: a bizarre breakup, an unexpected romance, and the birth of her son and daughter. Along the way, Liz wrestles with questions of what we owe our parents even when they fail us, and of how to share her mother’s hilarity, limitless love, and creativity with children --- without passing down the trauma of her mental illness.
NEVER SIMPLE is the story of enduring the legacy of a hard-to-love parent with compassion, humor and, ultimately, self-preservation.
Audiobook available, read by Amy Landon
