[.ca] Augusta, Gone: A True Story (ISBN 0060014156)

From Amazon.com:
Parents are advised to approach this wrenching memoir with caution--it will evoke all their worst fears. It's not just that Martha Tod Dudman frankly delineates her daughter Augusta's descent into drinking, smoking, drug use, and truancy, as well as casually lying about all of it. Dudman also acknowledges her own feelings of isolation, despair, and incredible guilt. Has she caused Augusta's behavior? Is it because she divorced Augusta's father? Did she spend too many hours working at her family-owned radio network? Is Augusta mimicking Dudman's own troubled teen years, when she got thrown out of high school for smoking pot? There aren't any easy answers, merely an agonizing litany of fears realized as Augusta comes and goes in her mother's house, vanishing for days at a time, moods ranging from manipulative to sullen to openly defiant, until things get so bad that Dudman enrolls her first in a wilderness program, then in a school program for troubled kids. Nothing miraculous happens, only more ugly confrontations, until Augusta finally runs away. Through the turmoil, however, we can see the troubled girl slowly and painfully turning a corner. Dudman's plain, punchy prose perfectly conveys the terror of a parent watching her child's life, along with her own, careen off the tracks, yet she also captures the charm and vitality of her "impossible, enraging, engaging, infuriating" daughter. As upsetting as this narrative often gets, there's always a trace of hope that Augusta and her family will pull through. --Wendy Smith

overwrought, narcissistic and self-pitying memoir crumbles:
Since we now live in a nation where affluent, clueless parents are raising hideously out-of-control children, Martha Tod Dudman's memoir, "Augusta, Gone," will find an eager reading audience. Undoubtedly, the excessively repetitive and banal "Gone" will be hyped as a necessary self-help manual for bewildered, distraught parents. The reality is that this overwritten lamentation features two signficant characters: a screwed-up teenaged daughter and her equally screwed-up presumably adult mother. Augusta is an execrable excuse of a child: blithely ignoring the love, suggestions and admonitions of her mother, she smokes, drinks, does drugs, sneaks out at night and hangs out with whatever low-lifes exist in her bucolic Maine seaport town. The scope of "Augusta, Gone" is what will become of this teen-aged mess and how her dippy mother survives repeated, but predictable, disappointment after disappointment. The author is herself a textbook recipe of why certain people should not become parents. As an indulged Jewish American Princess, Martha is suspended from her trendy prep school as a teenager and not permitted to attend graduation, to the consternation of her long-suffering mother. Consistently breaking her own parents' hearts, she trips on acid, wanders around the nation and Europe (presumably in search of some purpose for her life), and settles into a marriage which dissolves shortly after producing two children. Unable to find employment, Martha's mother does what any parent would; she provides her own daughter with a series of radio stations to own. Thus, by the time Martha begins to realize that as an adult, she has some serious responsibilities to shoulder, she hasn't an inkling as to what the idea of moral responsibility means. Is it any surprise that Martha's daugher becomes a living reincarnation of the mother? Augusta, in turn, is obnoxiously rebellious and unbelievably insensitive to the dynamics of her own family. The daughter's self-absorbtion mirrors her mother's narrow selfishness; neither character elicits sympathy because both are out of orbit with the realities of modern American life. Augusta is able to recycle misery on her family precisely because she knows that her mother has a limitless supply of "love." There simply is no motivation to change; why should there be? Whenver Augusta returns from her infuriating escapades, Martha is right there to forgive and forget, if only her daughter would utter the magic words, "Mommy, I love you." Readers will wade through nearly two hundred fifty pages of teen-age abuse, self-piteous lamentations and family dysfuction to discover the memoir's two incredible epiphanies: 1) raising children is really tough work and 2) even after we love our children, they can break our hearts. If your own experience has already taught you these esoteric lessons, "Augusta, Gone" will be exactly that -- gone.

What they didn't teach you at Antioch you can learn here!:
First, full disclosure. I went to Antioch at roughly the same time as Martha (right after Nixon invaded Cambodia and the resulting murders of protesting students at Kent State or, at least, that's how I remember it). So, in addition to the main event here, I was thrown back to my memories of arriving in a city I'd never been to on Friday, finding a place to crash (usually with other Antioch coop students) and going to work on Monday. A lifestyle made for Augusta! Now, as a parent of a sometimes ornery 15 year old, I wonder if my past, too, will intensify and become my present and/or future. But, thankfully, I was never as intense as Martha, so I continue to be optimistic. A "wonderful" book, that inspires, despite the lows this family went thru. My hat is off to you Martha for having the foresight to write this all down and to share it with us -- especially in the small community of Maine!

Such a Good Book!:
As a teacher in an inner city high school, I find this true to life writing revealing and insightful. It is rare that a parent is willing to share their experiences in such a profound and open way. Hats off to you Martha Dudman!

Sorry, No Thanks:
There are many interesting memoirs out there...I did not enjoy this book. This might be of use for people that have problem children, but no thanks.

It's real, folks.:
Martha is the daughter of writers and more importantly, writers who are journalists. In this family, people share their experiences without veneer and without excuses: This is what happened and how I saw it then and how I see it now. I'll take you there and maybe it will help you. Maybe it will kick you in the gut. Maybe both. You don't have to be raising a Problem Child to identify with Martha Dudman. You just have to have loved someone.