The Center of the Universe: A Memoir by Nancy Bachrach

The Center of the Universe by Nancy Bachrach is a gritty but humorous insight into family relationships and mental illness

My Book Review rating – a giggle-out-loud insight into family life Nancy Bachrach style

One of the things I love so much about Blue Archipelago is that since launching this site 18 months ago I have been introduced to a wide range of books that I would never have read before. The Center of the Universe is one of them. I’m a big book cover lover and this one screams – “pick me off the shelf and read me”… but then it includes the scary words “A Memoir” and those words would previously have meant that the book remained firmly on the shelf. I don’t know why I’d always avoided memoirs in the past – I suppose it’s because I read books to escape from reality and if what you’re reading is true then how much of an escape can it be? Of course once I read Sixtyfive Roses I realised what I was missing – which is why I jumped at the chance to review the Center of the Universe.

Alexandra Fuller is quoted on the cover of this book as saying that Bachrach is “one of the writers [she's] ever read” and I think I’d have to agree with her. This book is probably not a good one to read in public, I got quite a few strange looks as I was sitting there giggling away

In this memoir Nancy tells the story of her mother’s mental illness and how it affected their lives growing up. When she gets a call from her brother that her parents have been in a boating accident that has left her father dead and her mother in a coma Nancy rushes home undecided whether she wants her mother to wake up or not. In the months that follow Nancy builds a new relationship with her mother as she recovers from the accident.

Nancy does a fantastic job of covering sensitive issues with such a sense of dry humour that you can’t help but laugh and I found myself really feeling like I knew Nancy and her family.

One of my favourite ‘tales’ within the book tells of Nancy’s relationship with her ‘Mr Fix it’ father – I hope she won’t mind me reproducing it here for you:

When I moved to New York, Mort awarded me his piece de resistance, a five-year-old Chevy Caprice he had personally “maintained.” Christine, as I named her, got stuck nearly everywhere I went. She had a broken ignition switch, and so I was always asking strangers to “give me a little push” or “roll me”, acts that turned Christine on but made me feel promosicuous.

Then my Christine got more capricious. Her accelerator developed a mind of its own and plummeted down for no reason, making her lurch forward uncontrollably. To stop her, I had to put my left foot under the accelerator to release it. I had actually become quite adept at this, yet I knew that cars should not behave this way, and that it was not a good thing.

Since Mort trusted no one to work on his eroding fleet, I took the car back to Providence over a weekend. “Now what have you done?” was his welcoming comment when I pulled up into the driveway. He was a bit of a finger pointer. Up we went to the Shell station, six blocks with me drvining and Mort in the death seat, but Christine failed to perform in the alleged manner. Grumbling that nothing was wrong, but indulging me nonetheless, he allowed me to drive onto the hydraulic lift so he could “take a peek” underneath.

Ever in control, my father, who had just heard the story of the car’s willful self-propulsion, placed himself in the crawl space between the lift and the garage wall, directing me. “Roll it up. Roll it up.” The dutiful daughter did as ordered, gradually edging the car onto the platform, at which point Christine turned maniacal and plunged down her accelerator, and I came within six inches of pinningmy father to the wall.”

I really enjoyed Nancy Bachrach’s The Center of the Universe and if you are looking for a gritty memoir with some great giggle out loud humour you should definitely read it too.