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    Glitter and Glue: A Memoir
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    Glitter and Glue: A Memoir
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    Glitter and Glue: A Memoir
    Audiobook5 hours

    Glitter and Glue: A Memoir

    Written by Kelly Corrigan

    Narrated by Kelly Corrigan

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    From the author of The Middle Place comes a new memoir that examines the bond-sometimes nourishing, sometimes exasperating, occasionally divine-between mothers and daughters.

    When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as "Your father's the glitter but I'm the glue." This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom-with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism-would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly's life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler's checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting.

    But it didn't turn out the way she pictured it. In a matter of months, her savings shot, she had a choice: get a job or go home. That's how Kelly met John Tanner, a newly widowed father of two looking for a live-in nanny. They chatted for an hour, discussed timing and pay, and a week later, Kelly moved in. And there, in that house in a suburb north of Sydney, 10,000 miles from the house where she was raised, her mother's voice was suddenly everywhere, nudging and advising, cautioning and directing, escorting her through a terrain as foreign as any she had ever trekked. Every day she spent with the Tanner kids was a day spent reconsidering her relationship with her mother, turning it over in her hands like a shell, straining to hear whatever messages might be trapped in its spiral.

    This is a book about the difference between travel and life experience, stepping out and stepping up, fathers and mothers. But mostly it's about who you admire and why, and how that changes over time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 4, 2014
    ISBN9780385392877
    Unavailable
    Glitter and Glue: A Memoir

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    Reviews for Glitter and Glue

    4/5

    162 ratings40 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Kelly Corrigan is an excellent writer. Besides having a universally valuable story to tell, she's a master of metaphor, and her reading of the audiobook is stellar, complete with authentic accents, and voices for the different characters that are so convincing you completely forget that it's all being read by the same person. And there's this one part that is the hottest kissing scene I've ever read, described all from deep emotions without using sexual words. It's truly amazing. But you have to have the story behind you and the characters developed in order to experience it, so no fair skipping ahead. I think I might buy the paper version of the book just so I can pick it up and open it to the best parts and re-read them.
    • 4/5
      A very engaging memoir focused on a woman's evolving relationship with her mother, from childhood to when she's raising children of her own. I listened to the audio book read by the author, and her rendition of her mother's dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny. Very enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      More like a 3.75. Easy, breezy, quick and relatable prodigal daughter memoir about the sometimes complicated relationships between moms and daughters and how we grow to identify more with a parent when we take on a parenting role ourselves. Touching in a lighthearted way - not maudlin or faux-sentimental. Recommended for post-collegiate age daughters and moms of freshly minted adult daughters who feel unneeded and unmoored by now-adulting daughters.
    • 4/5
      This is a very good book about motherhood and the challenges that effect us all. Using her experiences helped her to help the young children that she was a nanny to get over their Mother's death. Very heartwarming on the human condition of what is passed down to us by our mothers.
    • 4/5
      An enjoyable memoir about a young woman learning to appreciate her mother while she is a nanny for 2 young children grieving their mother's death. I appreciate that the book didn't end with her going back to her mother and telling her how much she meant to her. I would have liked the second part of the book where she is a mother herself to be a little more fleshed out to learn whether or not she learned to be both the glitter and the glue for her children.
    • 4/5
      I'll read just about anything that Kelly Corrigan writes. Fun book.
    • 4/5
      A great book for both mothers and daughters.
    • 4/5
      In general I really like Kelly Corrigan's writing, although I have to admit that I was put off somewhat by her last publication, "Lift". This one, however, was more up to par with what I would expect after her initial memoir, "The Middle Place." In "Glitter and Glue", Kelly writes about her relationship with her mother, although in a somewhat roundabout way. A majority of the book centers on Kelly's experience as a nanny in Australia, working for a widowed husband and his two young children. Living in a family home without a mother, she begins to more greatly appreciate her own mother, who tends to live somewhat in the shadow of Kelly's exuberant, frequently referred-to father, Greenie. (Hence, the title of the book: her father being the glitter, her mother being the glue.)As with most memoirs, I most enjoyed the day-to-day tales, in this case those of Kelly's time in Australia, although the interspersed reflection of her mother's role in her life was thought-provoking as well. I'm still not sold on Kelly as a reader of her own audiobooks, however. Her monotone tends to turn me off, although with a memoir, I suppose it does add to the authenticity to hear the author read their own works.
    • 5/5
      Glitter and Glue is an outstanding piece of work. I inhaled every word of Kelly Corrigan's memoir, glued (my apologies) to the page as I followed Kelly through her experiences. Many of the chapters triggered memories and instances of ties with my own mother-daughter relationships. Not everyone is a mother, but almost every female has had a mother, aunt, grandmother, or other female that figures prominently in her life. This book should be placed at eye-level on shelves in libraries, book stores, and at home. I predict it will be the guiding word for those interested in understanding their own multi-generational female relationships. As a public librarian, I plan on adding this memoir to my GIrls Night Out book discussion group. Before that happens, I will be stopping every woman I meet to tell her about this remarkable book.
    • 5/5
      GLITTER AND GLUE, a memoir by Kelly Corrigan, is probably not a book I normally would have read, or even noticed. I would have dismissed it as just another "mother-daughter book." But my daughter pressed it on me, saying, "You've got to read this, Dad. It's really good!" The title reflects the roles her own parents played in the raising of Kelly and her two brothers. Her dad was the 'glitter' - the "hale-fellow-well-met" good-time Charley sort, in whose eyes Kelly could do no wrong. Her mother was the 'glue' - the responsible one, who made the rules, looked after the house and bills and made all the hard and important decisions.My daughter was right. This really is an excellent book, much more than what I'd expected. And it was easy to see why she so readily identified with Corrigan's story - the early rebellion against parental rules and restrictions, the life-long problem with self-image and weight control, the Baltimore connection, the clubbing with best friends, smoking and drinking. And then, finally, the gradual realization that perhaps your parents, particularly your mother, wasn't so wrong about things after all.Corrigan took off after college with her best friend, Tracy, to see the world, convinced that life really begins when you get out of the house. They make it all the way to Australia before they run out of funds. Too proud and stubborn to wire her folks for money, and unable to find any other work, Kelly takes a job in suburban Sydney as a nanny for two small children whose mother has died from cancer. Over the next several months with the Tanner family, she gradually begins to learn some larger truths about life as she begins to care deeply for her young charges, seven year-old Millie and four year-old Martin. And she becomes caught up in the lives of their extended and blended family.But this doesn't happen all at once. She still goes clubbing with Tracy, cruising to meet guys. On one such outing she tells of them sharing a jumbo pack of cigarettes -"... an incredible fifty cigarettes. Smoking is idiotic, I know. I've seen the pictures of dirty lungs, but I'm young, and we don't have cancer in our family. Anyway, I'll quit before I have kids."Again, I thought of my daughter, that easy feeling of invulnerability that afflicts us all when we are young. And, ironically, there IS cancer in Kelly's family, and she has her own frightening experience years later.In her spare time, Corrigan reads, making her way slowly through Willa Cather's classic MY ANTONIA, which she remembers as being a favorite of her mother's. There is a parallel here, of course - "There's no telling how MY ANTONIA would taste to me if I had tried it years ago, in class or one summer by the pool, instead of here, a foreigner in a motherless home ... And then there's the matter of my mother, who loved it so, and how I seem to be looking for her in every passage."Willa Cather was one of my own mother's favorite authors, and I thought of her as I read this. And of course, I thought of my daughter too, "looking for her in every passage." Another poignant segment is when Corrigan tells of overhearing her mother tell, with perfect pitch and timing, an off-color joke to her coworkers in the realty office where she worked. Shocked at hearing this from her devoutly Catholic and usually humorless mother, she reflects -"But now I see there's no such thing as A woman, ONE woman. There are dozens inside every one of them. I probably should've figured this out sooner, but what child can see the women inside her mom, what with all that Motherness blocking out everything else?"Too true. And here's another similar passage about how we see our mothers -"It was hard for me to imagine my mother young. She's never really been me, a girl out of college, looking at the map, wondering where to unpack her trunk and set up her JCPenney bedroom set."Again, I thought of my own mother, who died this year, and whose college letters from over seventy-five years ago I have been reading. A real revelation, meeting your mother, young. And another passage in which I see my daughter. In it, Corrigan is telling of her older self, a mother of two and a cancer survivor -"... although there's nothing unusually challenging about my children, I often find myself responding to their sudden and inscrutable moods, mighty wills, and near-constant arguing by turning into a wild-eyed fishwife. Some interactions are so strangely familiar, it's as if I once starred as little orphan Annie and then, decades later, found myself cast in the revival as Miss Hannigan."I had to laugh at this, because I still vividly remember my little girl belting out her own enthusisastic version of "Tomorrow"; and now, a young woman with a strong-willed little boy, calling her mother nearly every day and pouring out her troubles, only now realizing that sometimes indeed "It's a Hard-Knock Life."Yes, this is a "mother-daughter" book, but it's not just a book for women. There is a lot to be learned here - of mothers, daughters, wives - and sons, husbands and fathers would do well to pay heed. GLITTER AND GLUE is a funny, moving, and yes, a very wise book. I'm grateful to my daughter for giving it to me. Now I'm handing it over to my wife, who I'm sure will see not just our daughter in it, but herself and her own mother too. It's that kind of book. I recommend it highly.
    • 4/5
      I started this book shortly after I received it last year. I only got a few pages in and had to put it down because it just wasn't capturing my attention. Yesterday, when I picked it up, I couldn't put it down and read it all in two days. I really loved the story about the Tanner family and how the author learned that she was just passing through for them and she couldn't fix them but they were well on the way to coming through on their own. It definitely made me think of my mom and her voice in my head. I am looking at reading other books by Kelly Corrigan.
    • 4/5
      Memoirs are a tough nut. Most tend to flop with the overabundance of boring minutiae that don't tie-in to the overall story. This book...is not that. I was intrigued by the story and the lessons she learned from the outset. It is a great reminder of the love a parent gives, even in what appears to be the strangest of ways. It is a perfect Mother's Day gift...if I can wait that long to give it to her. :)
    • 4/5
      "As usual I received this book through the kind courtesy of some giveaway or other. In this case I suspect it was a ShelfAwareness drawing. Regardless of the origin and despite the kind consideration I give my candid opinions below.This book left me in an exceptional state of ambivalence. On the surface of things, pretty much nothing at all happened for the span of 215 pages. As memoirs go this one is rather vacuous and non-eventful. Those looking for a storyline will be sadly disappointed because there really isn't one. There's just nothing going on here... except... except that there IS... but it's all rather mysterious and internal.Those who are familiar with my usual review format will note a departure from the "good stuff"/"bad stuff" motif. That just doesn't apply here. If you were looking for car chases and explosions then this isn't really the book for you. Instead, the old adage plays out in detail. Let me back up a bit.I've been a married man long enough to know that a fair number of women live in fear of the day that they "become their mother". For whatever reason mothers and daughters just don't get along. Until... well, until one day they do. This book is the detailed narrative, told from the inside of the author's head, of how that transition happens. How one day you think your mother is insane and the next day she suddenly makes sense. It's a book about transitions and maturing, a woman's bildungsroman.At least that's my take on the book... the other thing about this book is that it's one of those that has a thousand meanings to a thousand people. If you choose to read the book it's VERY likely that you'll look back on my review and say, categorically, that I'm full of crap. That's really OK because at its heart the book is one of inspiring ideas. The specific idea that's delivered is up to the person receiving it. Look at it as being about mothers or renewal or recovery or family or whatever... it doesn't matter. The book is a brief and candid snapshot of someone's rather privileged life. The real point is that this book is one for thinkers but thinkers in an emotional sense, those who want to feel what someone else feels and extrapolate that to their own lives. There's little of plot but much of mind."
    • 4/5
      This is an outstanding memoir. Kelly Corrigan's relationships, especially the one with her father, come shining through. i can't wait to read her other books.
    • 4/5
      Driven by the mentality "things happen when you leave the house", Kelly Corrigan leaves home after University to travel the world and become interesting, eventually landing a job as a nanny to a family in Australia. Through her experience nannying she reevaluates her own relationship with her mother. I found this story interesting and warm. A quick read that is extremely relatable and that I very much enjoyed.
    • 5/5
      Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan is a book that made me laugh one minute and cry the next. It is the true story of a young Kelly straight out of college on a road trip to Australia when she runs out of money and takes s short- term job as a nanny of a couple of kids who recently lost their mom to cancer. This experience helps her gain greater insight into her mom and their relationship. Many of her insights can be carried over to those of us who have "trying" relations with our own maternal role models. Corrigan is wonderfully sarcastic and witty and can tell a story like no other. I can't wait to check out her two previous works, The Middle Place and Lift.
    • 3/5
      Glitter And Glue was an enjoyable read! interesting, for someone who has never been there, to read about Australia! A mother and daughter story with some keen observations, but it was not enlightening enough about the mother/daughter relationship if that was the true intent of the book. Despite that, and other unanswered questions, it was well worth reading!
    • 4/5
      I really like this book as it made me think of all the ways I've evolved into my mother. Some of the things are good and some are things that I wish I hadn't inherited/picked up.
    • 5/5
      What a great quick read! I love Kelly Corrigan and her honest writing. Is is true that we only appreciate our mothers as we get older? The author makes some observations that only a wiser and older daughter would make as she writes about her trip around the world as a young women, only to stop in Australia to take a position as a nanny with a young family in need of love. Her observations are spot on and she is so relatable I went to meet her at Random House. Loved this book, can't wait for the next one!
    • 4/5
      I received an advanced reader's copy of this book. This memoir is about the author, Kelly Corrigan, and her mother. It starts in present day and then back to when she was a teenager and travels with her friend Tracy. She works for a time, as a nanny, in Australia for John Tanner, who is recently widowed. While taking care of John's children, Kelly thinks of her mom and sees her in a different light. I enjoyed this book very much. It was an easy read.
    • 4/5
      I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book through Library Thing.Glitter and Glue is a memoir written by Kelly Corrigan about mothers and daughters and what she understands about her relationship with her own mother. When Kelly travels to the other side of the world and becomes a nanny to a family in Australia who recently lost their mother, she learns to see her strict and seemingly overbearing mother in a new light. This memoir is not what I expected, though I still enjoyed it. I knew it was about Corrigan's relationship with her mother. However I was surprised that there was very little live interaction between Kelly and her mother in this book. Most of what we learn about their relationship is told through flashbacks and Kelly's own observations. Yet it still worked. I think it is very true for many of us that we don't truly appreciate our mothers until we are away from them or until we are acting as mothers ourselves. Then, when we start seeing how much we act like our mothers now, so much about the way our mothers acted then begins to make sense.Corrigan makes some keen observations about this throughout the book, and her style of writing was easy to read and enjoy. At first I was a little frustrated that the book ended, because I felt like so many loose ends were left untied. But the epilogue helped to answer some of my questions about Corrigan's current connection to her friends in Australia. And I would like to read Corrigan's other memoir, The Middle Place, to find out more about her struggle with cancer and how her mother played a role in that. If, like me, you enjoy reading real stories about mothers and daughters, you should definitely add this one to your list!
    • 2/5
      Corrigan wrote this memoir as a tribute to her mother. Growing up her father was the fun-loving, adoring parent (the glitter), while her mother was more austere (the glue). As a young college graduate Corrigan embarks on a trip around the world. In Australia she is forced to take a job as a nanny to make ends meet. The Tanners, for whom she nannies, have recently lost their beloved wife and mother. As Corrigan spends time with them, she gradually comes to a better understanding and love of her own mother.I was excited to read this book--interested to explore the idea of differing parent roles, but ultimately the book disappointed me. I felt like neither the Tanners' story, nor the story of Corrigan and her mother was fully explored.
    • 3/5
      Where does a memoirist go after she has told her story? Perhaps she can go back and tell a little more?Or not? Usually I say one powerful story is enough. Then again, I'm not one for sequels or series.
    • 4/5
      I devoured this book but at the end was disappointed. Corrigan's description of her time in Australia felt completely true -- Glitter and Glue is brutally honest while still sweetly nostalgic. However, I wanted another 200 pages describing what happened between Corrigan's return from Australia and the present day. The transformation of Corrigan's relationship with her mother were not fully fleshed out.
    • 4/5
      A sort-of memoir about how life experiences after graduation can completely alter how a person perceives her family dynamics, particularly her relationship with her rock-solid, no-nonsense mother. She always said that Kelly's father was the glitter (he was always very effusively affectionate and outgoing), but she was the glue. After graduation, against her mother's advice, Kelly has decided to go with her best friend to Australia for new life experiences. After her savings run out, Kelly takes a job as a live-in nanny with a 40ish father of two, whose wife has recently died of cancer. Kelly does learn some life lessons, but not the ones she'd planned for, as she comes to know this extended family (an adult step-son and father-in-law also live there). She also comes to know the dead wife and mother through her loved ones, and develops a new appreciation for her own sometimes flinty mother. Well-written, frequently compelling.
    • 5/5
      Oh my. What a wonderful book. Somehow, I've missed reading Kelly Corrigan's previous efforts, but I'll be remedying that as soon as I have the time.In GLITTER AND GLUE, Corrigan recounts her time spent in Australia as a nanny for the Tanner children--a boy and girl whose mother has recently died. As their nanny, Kelly begins to understand and value her own mom and Mary Corrigan's role as the "glue" of their family. With stories from life with the Tanners juxtaposed with tales from the Corrigan house, Kelly gives the reader plenty to think about, a lot to smile about, and the opportunity for quite a few tears too.As with all books that I read, I mark the pages that have phrases that I love, passages that I'll want to re-read, and what I like to call Truths: things that make me exclaim "Yes!" as I read. Had I used a highlighter to mark up GLITTER AND GLUE, at least half of it would have been yellow.GLITTER AND GLUE is an homage to motherhood and the difficult and rewarding job that it is. Although Corrigan left for Australia with the belief that "things happen when you leave the house," she eventually learned that life's biggest adventures often happen when you stay at home.Many many thanks to LibraryThing and the publisher for providing me an ARC of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.
    • 5/5
      I Just finished reading Glitter and Glue and I didn't want it to end. I usually don't like nonfiction and was greatly surprised by my reaction. The book is about a grown daughter's memories of her mother, and how she resisted her, growing up. They were nothing alike. As her mother used to tell her, "Your father is the glitter and I'm the glue." She goes off to see the world, after college, and is in Australia when her money runs out. She becomes a live in nanny to a recently widowed father of two children. While there she takes her duties very seriously and finds her mother's voice everywhere. She now has distance and time between herself and her mother and thinks,"there's no such thing as A woman, one woman, there are dozens inside every one . I probably should've figured this out sooner but what Child can see the woman inside her mom, what with all that Motherness blocking out everything else?" If you ever had a rough patch with your mom, or just want a wonderfully entertaining, warm, humorous read, read, Glitter and Glue.
    • 4/5
      I'll admit, I love Kelly Corrigan's books, and when I received this through Early Reviewers I was thrilled! True to form, reading Corrigan's book is like listening to a close friend tell a story. I was lucky enough to read it in one sitting (airplane) so it was a quick but fulfilling read for me. While Corrigan's last book focused much on her father, now her mother gets her due. Much of the book is focused on Corrigan's nanny job in Australia when she was younger, but she ties that into current time and how all this makes her reflect on her relationship with her mother. I won't share too much, but just this - if you liked The Middle Place, you'll like this one too - pick it up!
    • 3/5
      A book about mothering and mothers, with emphasis on the author's year of adventure and au pairing in Australia. The author clearly wants her readers to connect with her mother, but somehow the spotlight is always on the author and her adventures abroad. I would have liked to know more about every day life with the author and her mother, to know more about what makes them tick. and what makes them special. Instead, you get a postcard from early 1990s au pair in Australia with vague mentions to the author's mother.
    • 5/5
      Kelly Corrigan grew up with a enthusiastic and easy going father and a rigid and standoffish mother who was in charge of everything. The title "glitter and glue" explains that dynamic. It took Kelly a trip to Australia and a stint as a nanny to a recently widowed man to understand just how important her mother's role is in her life. This book is not an earth shattering social commentary but it is a beautiful soliloquy on what it means to be a mother, to have a mother or to be absent a mother. At one point she writes about her mother's daily exhaustion coming from feeling too much and I had to read the line fifty times because I related so closely to the sentiment. This beautifully written book is both touching and humorous and I will remember it for a while.