Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing

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But it’s also a phenomenally strange novel, maybe one of the most repetitive I’ve ever read, with words (indirection, teasing, frugal), accusations and anecdotes recurring to the point of fatigue. Is this an echo of the nature of family life, of our ability to nurse grudges and fuel hobbyhorses, or just writerly indiscipline? Is Theroux evoking a son’s obsessive quest for his mother’s love, or is he fantastically unaware of her as a person who exists outside of him? Mother Land, despite its author’s fondness for an anthropological stance, does not allow us to see: but perhaps it never could.

When her mother abruptly decides to stop taking care of her children, working mother Julia Johnstone is forced to take a much more active role in their lives and education. She becomes friends with working-class Liz and stay-at-home dad Kevin Brady, and finds herself interacting with the local mother group, including their shallow and acerbic leader, Amanda. Julia is constantly overwhelmed by aspects of parenthood, and receives no support from her perpetually-absent husband Paul. Working at a PR firm at the start of the series, Julia eventually quits and starts her own PR business. Wilson, Benji (7 November 2017). "Motherland reaches similar comedy heights to Fawlty Towers". The Telegraph . Retrieved 8 November 2017.Lively and evocative, Mother Land is a deftly crafted exploration of identity and culture, with memorable and deeply human characters who highlight how that which makes us different can ultimately unite us.” —Amy Myerson, author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays and The Imperfects Rifkind, Hugo (23 December 2022). "Motherland review — school-gate mum politics with seething, unspoken depths". The Times . Retrieved 24 December 2022. In the end the multi faceted aspects of relationships, knowing oneself, personal development, courage and regret all mingle to make a fascinating read. Anne drives a people carrier which she is using for a carpool, which Julia unsuccessfully tries to join. Liz is angry with Lee, the father of her child, for cohabiting with a woman called Debbie-Louise, only 3 weeks after she believes he started his relationship with her. Amanda, who is having marriage problems, confides in Kevin that once a month she has sex with a soldier, Bobby, who is based at Aldershot Garrison, because her husband Johnny enjoys watching her have sex with another man. An argument at a party between Liz, Julia, Anne and Amanda is ended abruptly by Kevin telling them that Amanda is having threesomes with a soldier. I’ve been reading a lot of character driven stories this month and I am getting kind of bored of them. So unfortunately I may have read this one at the wrong time. If you have any good plot driven stories, please let me know!

Swati is the last person Rachel Meyer expects to find at her front door in Mumbai. Swati is also the last person Rachel’s husband, Dhruv, expects to find at home after work one day. Swati, a native of Kolkata, is Dhruv’s mother and Rachel’s mother-in-law, and she’s moving in. So starts Leah Franqui’s novel, Mother Land, a story of trying to find oneself in another country and placing the success of that on another person. Swati slept with her best friend’s son she slept with a man that is the same age as her own son and they grew up together and then she slept with him and she hooked up with a boy who was practically like her own son I do not understand what that was at all what she whyyyy????? A chaotic and blunt-talking single mother who is unpopular with Amanda's clique. Liz forms a trio alongside Kevin and Julia. She has two sons, Charlie and Max, of whom she shares custody with her ex-husband, Lee. From the critically acclaimed author of America for Beginners, a wonderfully insightful, witty, and heart-piercing novel, set in Mumbai, about an impulsive American woman, her headstrong Indian mother-in-law, and the unexpected twists and turns of life that bond them. Mother was dissatisfied: other people’s contentment niggled at her. She most of all resented her children’s happiness. If Mother had been happy, how different our lives would have been.

Advance Praise

While the first third of the book was a bit slow and repetitive I am happy to recommend it based on the last two-thirds of the book alone. But since these four years began, this is the first time I read a Brazilian poet writing in English and by extension also in Brazilian Portuguese - something I feel deserved more attention, because I first though the author was Portuguese and not Brazilian. There’s a different, even so slightly, between these two languages and that should be pointed out -, and doing so beautifully. Another thing I love about writers who have English as their secondary language (instead of their primary), it’s how they bleed - or switch, per se - into their mother-tongue while writing, while expressing themselves. I believe my first encounter with such a method was while reading Ocean Vuong’s poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, where he makes some remarks in Vietnamese instead of English. And I LOVED that. As someone whose mother-tongue isn’t English, I feel a different sort of connection while reading someone express themselves in something other than English. I understood that so deeply. So that might be one of the reasons why I loved this poetry collection so much. I enjoyed the story and the writing although the character of Rachel seemed a bit immature and whiny and not always likeable. I had fun watching Swarti takes risks to break through her cultural norms to give herself a better life. While I enjoyed having a 'tour' through Mumbai, I didn't get as deep a sense of the city as I would have liked, but I think that might be harder to do with contemporary fiction over historical fiction. Despite this, I still enjoyed 'exploring' the city with Rachel. I appreciate that the author uses her experience to write this story as that always adds another level to my enjoyment as well.

Jays Mutter ist wunderbar. Für ihre Kinder war sie eine liebevolle Mutter, die ihre Familie zusammengehalten hat. Auch wenn das Geld meistens knapp war, haben sie und ihr Mann es geschafft, ihren Kindern alles zu geben was sie sich wünschten. Die Familie hielt zusammen und die Kinder haben die Eltern mit kleineren Jobs unterstützt. Und nach dem Vorbild ihrer Eltern haben auch sie Familien gegründet und leben dieses Vorbild weiter. This was a very difficult book to stomach given that Jay's (Paul Theroux's?) family dynamics are astoundingly similar to the dynamics at play in my own family. On the one hand, it was incredibly refreshing to see something written that so accurately elucidated what my experience has been - there were quite a few times that I shouted out "Yes! That's exactly right!" or "Wow and I thought I was the only person who had a family like this!" But . . . Julia meets a former colleague, Caroline, outside the gates of her children's primary school. Caroline does not remember Julia. However, Julia is keen to impress her, so Julia becomes involved in a school fundraiser which Caroline is organising, despite Julia hating such things. Kevin becomes a "human cloakroom", wearing several coats simultaneously, causing him to become uncomfortably hot. Liz puts a great deal of alcohol in the punch. A "promise auction" leaves Amanda red-faced. When Rachel ends up with a cleaner coming more frequently and a cook she definitely doesn't want things start to fall apart, and yet mysteriously they also come together, just not in the way either Rachel or Swati expected. For Rachel cooking is important, for Swati one has servants for that.

Reading this poetry collection was a life-changing experience. I’ve been an avid poetry reader for about four years now, and I admit that most of my reading revolves around American poets. So, at this point, I’m very familiar with the English language. But, from the beginning, I’ve always sought more diverse poets, maybe because I latched with their poetry more than the average white poet (even though I’m white myself). What I loved the most about these poets, was the way they talked about their identity through their poems, be it their race or ethnicity, sexuality, gender, etc. To me, that was what brought those poems to light and made them so damn gorgeous. Is that enough? Just to have faith that things might change? Or should we do things, to make them change?” A stay-at-home dad to Rosie and Emily, who unsuccessfully tries to ingratiate himself into Amanda's circle. His wife, Jill, an unseen character, treats him terribly and seems to resent both him and their children; they divorce in the third series. As Swati's later reflects, "They had seen each other." I love that line. 'I see you' is a powerful statement.