Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Book Summary and Reviews of The End of Eve by Ariel Gore

The End of Eve by Ariel Gore

The End of Eve

A Memoir

by Ariel Gore

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Mar 2014, 234 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

At age 39, Ariel Gore has everything she's always wanted: a successful writing career, a long-term partnership, a beautiful if tiny home, a daughter in college and a son in preschool. But life's happy endings don't always last. If it's not one thing, after all, it's your mother. Her name is Eve. Her epic temper tantrums have already gotten her banned from three cab companies in Portland. And she's here to announce that she's dying. "Pitifully, Ariel," she sighs. "You're all I have."

Ariel doesn't want to take care of her crazy dying mother, but she knows she will. It's the right thing to do, isn't it? And, anyway, how long could it go on? "Don't worry," Eve says. "If I'm ever a burden, I'll just blow my brains out." Amidst the chaos of clowns and hospice workers, pie and too much whiskey, Ariel's own ten-year relationship begins to unravel. Darkly humorous and intimately human, The End of Eve redefines the meaning of family and everything we've ever been taught to call love.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. By turns tender and heartbreaking, Gore's book is a brave, thoroughly authentic journey to the center of the human heart. Wickedly sharp reading filled to bursting with compassion, rage, pain and wit." - Kirkus

"Gore's mantra of 'Behave in a way you're going to be proud of' guided her well during her mother's seemingly unending final illness but also in the writing of this book." - Library Journal

"Ariel Gore's memoir is in its essence a how to book. In the face of death, our grief, how to breathe, how to be brave, how to be funny, how to be authentic. How to make it through. But most of all: tenderness - how Ariel puts human tenderness on the page is an act of poetry damn close to sublime." - Tom Spanbauer. In the City of Shy Hunters

"Ariel Gore has blown my mind twice before with her previous books on motherhood and happiness - now she's stunned me a third time with The End of Eve. This is the story of the world's most startlingly insane, beautiful mother who was supposed to die in one year - but nearly killed her entire family and staff before she was through." - Susie Bright, Full Exposure

"Dorothy Parker famously said 'there are no happy endings,' but Ariel Gore's sweet, tough, elegant account of her mother's last days is absurdly happy - if happy means inhabiting life in all its mess, distress, beauty and occasional hilarity. A near-perfect gem." - Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life

This information about The End of Eve was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Ariel Gore

Ariel Gore is the publisher of Hip Mama Magazine. Her books include Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness; How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead; The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show; Atlas of the Human Heart; and The Hip Mama's Survival Guide. She lives in Oakland, CA.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more biography/memoir...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Our Evenings
    Our Evenings
    by Alan Hollinghurst
    Alan Hollinghurst's novel Our Evenings is the fictional autobiography of Dave Win, a British ...
  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.