Book Review: 'How to Forget' by Kate Mulgrew

How to Forget A Daughter’s Memoir (2019) is a brutally honest memoir written by the New York- based actress Kate Mulgrew which is decidedly about the lives and deaths of her parents. The author was born on April 29, 1955 and grew up in Dubuque, Iowa, the second oldest child (and oldest girl) in a large Irish Catholic family.

I have always admired the work of Katherine Kiernan Mulgrew, ever since she played the leading role of Mary Ryan for two years in the ABC soap opera RYAN’S HOPE. The half-hour program was my favorite soap when I was still a teenaged soap opera fan in 1975, and I followed faithfully her performances as a young Irish American woman (who in actuality was only four years older than myself.) She always struck me as an extremely strong woman and I suppose that I could relate to her Irish Catholic heritage.

I learned from this memoir when Ms. Mulgrew expressed an interest in acting as a child, her mother, Joan, encouraged her to audition for local theater productions, while her father Thomas James "T.J." Mulgrew II, never really understood her desire to act. She left Iowa for New York City at the tender age of 17 to pursue a career in acting. She was accepted into the Stella Adler Conservatory (part of New York University’s acting program) and studied there for only a year, because she landed the lead role of Mary Ryan in 1975, which vaulted her to instant stardom.

During her time on RYAN’S HOPE, Ms. Mulgrew played the role of Emily Webb in the American Shakespeare Theatre production of OUR TOWN in my hometown of Stratford, Connecticut. Although I saw several Shakespearean plays on high school field trips to the Shakespeare Theatre, I unfortunately did not see her in this role.

Others know Kate Mulgrew as an American actress noted for her roles as Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, but I was not a fan of this Star Trek incarnation. I did know, however, that Ms. Mulgrew made history in the Star Trek franchise when she became the first female captain as a series regular in a leading role. Most recently, she has been seen as Galina "Red" Reznikov on Orange Is the New Black, another show I have not yet seen. She has also performed in numerous television shows, theater productions, and movies.

When Voyager came to an end after seven full seasons, Ms. Mulgrew returned to the theater, and in 2003 starred in a one-woman play called TEA AT FIVE based on Katharine Hepburn's memoir Me: Stories of My Life. Having seen a wonderful local production of TEA AT FIVE, I am not surprised that it was a critical success and that her performance won her two awards.

In 2010, she starred as Cleopatra in William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra at Hartford Stage, which was immediately before I began writing theatre reviews.

In How to Forget, Ms. Mulgrew writes in detail about returning to Iowa to care for both of her ailing parents, whom she dearly loves and steadfastly manages their care. Her father is diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer and the story of his death is told in the first half of the book. Her mother suffered with atypical Alzheimer’s, and her death is agonizing in its length.

The months that the author spends with her parents, mostly in her family home in Dubuque, allowed her to reflect on each of their lives and how they clearly shaped her own as a successful actress, mother and writer. These months are turbulent as best, as her childhood had been, sometimes joy-filled and in the end, tragic.

Breathtaking and powerful, laced with the author’s irreverent wit, How to Forget is a considered portrait of a mother and a father, an emotionally powerful memoir that demonstrates how love fuses children and parents, and an honest examination of family, memory, and indelible loss.

I could not put down this memoir, despite the fact that the ending of both halves of the book was never in doubt. Anyone with aging parents can relate to the angst the author experiences dealing with doctors, caregivers and her five siblings; details of her unconventional childhood are revealed throughout the 334 pages of the two acts. The theatre lover in me most appreciated the tidbits of how she became an actress and her subsequent career.

Don’t take the first part of the title means that the memoir is a kind of how-to in dealing with grief, although some readers may come away with some actions with which they can relate. I would venture that most of the chapters of this book were very difficult for Ms. Mulgrew to write, but I am grateful that she did.

Kate Mulgrew is an active member of the Alzheimer's Association National Advisory Council, and clearly honors the memory of her late mother in this work. She is also the bestselling author of Born with Teeth, which I plan to search for at my library.

All photos from the Kate Mulgrew Facebook page

Nancy Sasso Janis, writing theatre reviews since 2012 as a way to support local venues, posts well over 100 reviews each year. In 2016, her membership in the Connecticut Critics Circle began and her contributions of theatrical reviews, previews, and audition notices are posted not only in the Naugatuck Patch but also on the Patch sites closest to the venue. Follow the reviewer on her Facebook pages Nancy Sasso Janis: Theatre Reviewer and Connecticut Theatre Previews and on Twitter @nancysjanis417 Check out the NEW CCC Facebook page.

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