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Unforgettable
- Narrated by: Scott Simon
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
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Unforgettable
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Summary
"I'm getting a life's lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU.
We never stop learning from our mothers, do we?"
UNFORGETTABLE is a son's spirited, affecting, and inspiring tribute to his remarkable mother and the love between parent and child.
When NPR's Scott Simon began tweeting from his mother's hospital room in July 2013, he didn't know that his missives would soon spread well beyond his 1.2 million Twitter followers. Squeezing the magnitude of his final days with her into 140-character updates, Simon's evocative and moving meditations spread virally. Over the course of a few days, Simon chronicled his mother's death and reminisced about her life, revealing her humor and strength, and celebrating familial love.
UNFORGETTABLE, expands on those famous tweets to create a memoir that is rich, deeply affecting, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating. His mother was a glamorous woman of the Mad Men-era; she worked in nightclubs, modeled, dated mobsters and movie stars, and was a brave single parent to young Scott Simon. Spending their last days together in a hospital ICU, mother and son reflect on their lifetime's worth of memories, recounting stories laced with humor and exemplifying resilience.
UNFORGETTABLE is not only one man's rich and moving tribute to his mother's colorful life and graceful death, it is also a powerful portrayal of the universal bond between mother and child.
Critic reviews
"Simon's radio background is evident in this production. His relaxed pace and pleasant vocal quality are conducive to easy listening." (AudioFile)
“Patricia Lyons Simon Newman was a bombshell: drop-dead gorgeous, glamorous, hilarious, insightful, curious, a woman whose bounding, generous, mischievous presence beckoned to others like the first warm sunshine of spring. She was wise, irreverent, brave in loss and grateful in joy, and urgently, thankfully alive to the beauty in everything and everyone. And before anything else, she was a profoundly devoted mother to her son, NPR host, journalist, and author, Scott Simon. In his poignant, funny, intimate memoir of his last days with her, Simon reflects on the lessons she taught him, the preciousness that death gives to life, and the endless resonance of love. This is an unforgettable meditation on a life lived, as Hemingway wrote, 'all the way up.'” —Laura Hillenbrand, author of UNBROKEN: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption and SEABISCUIT: An American Legend on the audio recording of Unforgettable
“With UNFORGETTABLE, Simon reveals not the possibilities of social media but its limits. Those 140-character bursts...seem inadequate compared with the skilled unspooling of this memoir. This book is about family secrets revealed...because a moment arrives when they're all that matter and secrecy no longer does. [Reading this] you realize that the tears have been flowing...easing your way through a book that easily matches its title.” —Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post
“Simon's memoir is so captivating that everyone, not just fans of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, will enjoy learning about the wellspring that nourished the award-winning journalist's wit, intelligence, heart, and chutzpah. Wait, an enjoyable memoir about a dying mother? Indeed. That is part of Simon's...charisma. Every child should have such an opportunity to be there for his or her mother in those final days and hours. Every mother should have such a gifted child.” —BOOKLIST (*Starred Review)