NONFICTION - Feb. 5, 1995

SEARCHING FOR MERCY STREET My Journey Back to My Mother Anne Sexton by Linda Gray Sexton (Little, Brown: $22.95; 307 pp.) First-person accounts of being brought up in a difficult or abusive situation has become a sort of sub-genre, especially if a famous person is involved. This type of memoir is often talked about derisively by people who value “real” books. Another common sentiment is, “Why should I read about yet one more depressing life.” However, “Searching for Mercy Street,” Linda Gray Sexton’s exploration of her relationship with her mother, poet Anne Sexton, is so smart, so well written, moving and generous that it transcends the typecasting that could have easily become a trap.

Linda Sexton was raised in a home completely dominated by Anne’s mental illness. Suicide was a constant threat. As a parent, Anne Sexton seemed to either completely reject her daughter, or force her to participate in deeply sick behavior in the hopes of feeding an endless, black, saber-sawed need. There were very few boundaries in the Sexton household.

All this is written about with grace, precision and most importantly, love. Linda Sexton is removed enough from her mother to show a three-dimensional portrait of the woman, yet brave enough to shine those same high-beams on herself. Her images are often beautiful, such as this description of the unspoken knowledge that someday Anne Sexton would successfully commit suicide. “This awareness, however unconscious, gave the family a purpose around which to unite, and we allowed ourselves no room for divisiveness. . . . In a tight cordon we surrounded her, as if she were a stream of water spouting from a hose and we were children trying to catch with our hands her quicksilver light.” In “Searching for Mercy Street,” Sexton has indeed caught her mother’s light, and even better, she gives it to us.