Love of My Life
Insights of Barbara Mailer Wasserman
Keywords:
memoir, women’s life writing, family narrative, gender and identity, twentieth-century history, political engagement, self-representation, Barbara Mailer WassermanAbstract
In this book review, Denise Doherty Pappas assesses Love of My Life: Reflections of Barbara Mailer Wasserman, a memoir that traces the life of Norman Mailer’s sister as she navigates love, work, politics, family, and self-fashioning across the mid- to late twentieth century. Pappas emphasizes Wasserman’s wit, candor, and retrospective intelligence, highlighting the memoir’s portraits of romantic relationships, political engagement, and professional ambition in periods when female independence was constrained by social expectation. Particular attention is given to Wasserman’s evolving relationship with her brother, Norman Mailer, which the review presents as mutually formative yet resistant to reductive narratives of influence or subordination. By situating the memoir within broader questions of gender, memory, and self-representation, the review argues that Love of My Life offers a compelling account of a woman’s insistence on autonomy and meaning, as well as a valuable complement to public narratives surrounding Mailer’s life and career.
