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Another Song About the King: A Novel, by Kathryn Stern
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In this stunning novel, a mother's desperate desire to be somebody, fueled by the memory of a date she once had with Elvis, provokes an intense rivalry with her daughter.
Silvie Page, determined to escape the control and frustrations of her mother, has started her own life--she's moved to New York, gotten a job in publishing, met a wonderful man. Still, her entangled and competitive relationship with her mother, Mimi, continues to haunt her. Moving back and forth in time, Another Song About the King explores how the fantasies and experiences of one generation have an impact on the lives of another. Frustrated by her life as a housewife in the sixties, Mimi names her daughter Silvie, as a near anagram of Elvis. Caught up in a fantasy world of the King and fame, Mimi sews clothes from her unique designs but remains mired in unfulfilled artistic ambitions and the need to dominate her family. Yet even as Silvie begins to free herself from Mimi's jealousy and expectations, a family crisis draws her back into her mother's web.
Another Song About the King is a rich and moving novel that goes deep into the heart of identity and the complex relationships within a family to reveal the ways in which happiness can be held hostage to the past and a daughter's struggle for freedom can lead to reconciliation, renewal, and love. Written with lyricism, insight, humor, and grace, it introduces a fresh new voice in American fiction, Kathryn Stern.
- Sales Rank: #5272423 in Books
- Published on: 2000-03-07
- Released on: 2000-03-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .92" h x 6.38" w x 9.50" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
From Library Journal
In this first novel, Silvie deals with a lifetime of her mother Mimi's overshadowing dramatics. The novel travels in time, with chapters alternating between Silvie's childhood and current adulthood. Mimi's defining moment--a teenage date with Elvis Presley--is constantly discussed and embellished, much to the embarrassment of her family. Mimi is jealous of her daughter and continuously annoys Silvie (an anagram of Elvis) with her dramatic clothing and nontraditional ways. Silvie gains strength by leaving home for college and a new life in New York City. But just as her life is falling into place and a serious relationship starts to blossom, Silvie must return home to help Mimi in a time of intense crisis. This is an insightful, well-written look at a difficult mother-daughter relationship. It also captures the interesting place of women in the Sixties, as Mimi struggles with her boredom and unfulfilled ambition. A solid purchase for all fiction collections.
-Beth Gibbs, P.L. of Charlotte & Mecklenburg Cty., NC
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Silvie Page believes that she has finally escaped her mother. She has moved to New York, started working, and has even fallen in love. But when her mother Simone, whom she has called Mimi since childhood, is stricken with cancer, Silvie returns home to care for her. This brings back memories of the past: Mimi's outrageous behavior, her competition with Silvie, and her belief that the time she dated Elvis was her one moment of glory. Mimi's fixation with all things Elvis puts a strain on her relations with her family, especially Silvie, whose name is an anagram of Elvis. As Silvie and her mother plan her wedding, she begins to come to terms with and understand her mother's lost dreams and how they affected her. In her first novel, Stern handles the love/hate relationship between mothers and daughters with skill and understanding, making this more than just another novel on an often-explored theme. Indeed, the novel is at its best when focusing on Mimi and her obsession with Elvis and most important, her dreams of greatness that are never realized. Kristine Huntley
From Kirkus Reviews
A well-crafted if underplotted debut novel in which a daughter learns to forgive her high-maintenance, Elvis Presleyobsessed mother after a fatal illness brings the two together for those obligatory healing moments. Silvie Page begins her story as she packs for her honeymoon, then goes back to the subject of her childhood and Momor Mimi, as an exasperated Silvie soon calls her. Chapters describing Silvies childhood alternate with descriptions of her arrival in New York after graduation, hoping to be an artist; her temp jobs that lead finally to great job on a magazine with a tough but tenderhearted editor; and her falling in love with, and eventually marrying, Scotty Perlman, an ER physician. As for the other side of the story: Mimi married Dan Page to get away from her own demanding family, who had immigrated to Mississippi in flight from the Nazis. Her great claim is that she later once had a date with Elvis Presleythe details vary, but her devotion to The King never falters. While little Silvie played at her own childish games, Mimi would dance in her blue suede shoes to Presley records or sew the flamboyant outfits that so embarrassed her daughter. Bored and unhappy, Mimi complained to Silvie, competed with her, mortified her in publiceven took up drawing to prove she was better. As she grows older, Silvie becomes ever more determined to get away as soon as she can from a mother for whom ordinary came hard.'' But a year after Silvie moves to New York, Mimi calls to say shes undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. A visit at Thanksgiving finds Mimi, though fighting hard, obviously dying. Silvie decides to come home in an attempt to understand her mother and forgive her for the injuries of the past before its too late. A would-be feel-good story about alienated mothers and daughters brought together by a terrible disease. Middling. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Resolution of mother-daughter relationship
By M. Desoer
Most mothers and daughters have bumps or strains in their relationships, but Silvie has grown up under the "guiding hand" of an extremely narcissistic mother, whose claim to fame is her purported date (or is it dates) with Elvis. In fact, she confides to her daughter that Silvie is meant to be an anagram of Elvis. The Elvis-date story, in its various permutations, surfaces at several points in the story, and provides the basis for Silvie's mother's ever-present discontent with her suburban life.
As Silvie grows up in her mother's bizarre household, she attempts to break away; ultimately, she moves to New York. When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Silvie's world is turned upside down, as she tries to reconcile her relationship with her mother and find out the "truths" and "whys" about her and her mother's life.
I don't usually cry when I read books, but the tears flowed around the end.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
a wrenching exploration of a mother-daughter relationship
By Bruce J. Wasser
With compassion, insight and elegance, Kathryn Stern's wonderful debut novel, "Another Song about the King," traces the tensions and fissures between a repressed but talented mother and her daughter, whose own life's experiences sadly reflect the disappointments, resentments and fears felt by her mother. Stern paints a vivid picture of Simone, whose mothering skills mirror the venomous pressures and arid emotional wasteland of her own childhood. Simone is so repressive and begruding of her daughter's right to a life that, at times, it appears that she could not be more deliberate in her emotional abuse. Silvie, in turn, at a very early age, deliberately withdraws from her mother and builds such an anguished anger and sense of disappointment with her circumstances that she refuses to call her mother any other name than Mimi.
The central conceit of the novel turns around Simone's teen-age "relationship" with Elvis Presley, a "date" whose scope is never completely determined but whose impact on the dissatisfied Simone grows and distorts her own ability to live as a functional adult. Simone's discontent is the central fact of her life. "For a long time, I liked being married, the routine, the security. But then it was the late sixties...and there I was in the suburbs, just planning a week of dinner and making them." The adult daughter, Silvie (whose own name, incidentally, is a semi-anagram of Elvis), understood "her discontent, the discontent of all women caught between the work of staying home and raising children and the larger work of the world."
Stern's masterful talent of characterization reveals itself fully through Silvie, a sensitive and inquisitive child who bears the brunt of her mother's smoldering fury. How should a child respond to a parent who insists the child develop her talents, but once expressed, elicits a competitive anger from the very adult she yearns to please? Silvie decides to withdraw, to finish in second place, to acquiesce to her mother. This tremendously affecting character pushes her sadness "down into that tight little bead no one could see, filling the space with emptiness, nothingness...I feared I lacked a self."
"Another Song" is not just about the evolving relationship between a mother and her daughter. This deeply reflective novel also treats the issues of insanity, suicide, depression, divorce, existential anguish and terminal illness. Never forgotten is the humanity of the central characters, and that compassion animates Stern's ability to make even a Simone a character about whom we care. This author, with a sure and sensitive hand, understands the quest all children, regardless of age, have to understand and forgive their parents.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Another Song About the King: A new Voice that soars!
By A Customer
"Another Song About the King" is a moving portrayal of the mother/daughter relationship at it's most poetic, heartfelt and compassionate. Simone, a Detroit housewife "who could have been somebody" had she stayed in her native South, is the mother of Silvie, a girl wise beyond her years who has lived her life in the fear that the more potential she shows, the more displeased her mother will be. When Silvie finally breaks free of her mother and moves to New York and her life begins to take off, Simone is struck down with cancer and Silvie must come to terms with a mother, as much larger than life as she is difficult. "Another Song About the King" moved me to tears with writing eloquent, passionate and poetic. The character of Simone reminded me of an Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie" set aginst the backdrop of the sixties. Her credo of "Always order a large" is particularly poignant when the reader takes into account the simple background of the middle class suburb that Simone has found her self in. Author Stern has also shown how a woman of talent and audacity could get trapped, particularly in early sixties America. I loved this book and know that other readers will as well, particularly women. The final chapters are gorgeous. I can't wait to see what characters this young author of such tremendous skill and talent will invent next.
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