Motherland
A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
“I’m reading this book right now and loving it!”—Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild
How can a mother and daughter who love (but don’t always like) each other coexist without driving each other crazy?
“Vibrating with emotion, this deeply honest account strikes a chord.”—People
“A wry and moving meditation on aging and the different kinds of love between women.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
After surviving a traumatic childhood in nineteen-seventies New York and young adulthood living in the shadow of her flamboyant mother, Rita, a makeup-addicted former television singer, Elissa Altman has managed to build a very different life, settling in Connecticut with her wife of nearly twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, still orbiting around her mother but keeping far enough away to preserve the stable, independent world she has built as a writer and editor. Then Elissa is confronted with the unthinkable: Rita, whose days are spent as a flâneur, traversing Manhattan from the Clinique counters at Bergdorf to Bloomingdale’s and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall, leaving her completely dependent upon her daughter.
Now Elissa is forced to finally confront their profound differences, Rita’s yearning for beauty and glamour, her view of the world through her days in the spotlight, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of preserving youth. To sustain their fragile mother-daughter bond, Elissa must navigate the turbulent waters of their shared lives, the practical challenges of caregiving for someone who refuses to accept it, the tentacles of narcissism, and the mutual, frenetic obsession that has defined their relationship.
Motherland is a story that touches every home and every life, mapping the ferocity of maternal love, moral obligation, the choices women make about motherhood, and the possibility of healing. Filled with tenderness, wry irreverence, and unforgettable characters, it is an exploration of what it means to escape from the shackles of the past only to have to face them all over again.
Praise for Motherland
“Rarely has a mother-daughter relationship been excavated with such honesty. Elissa Altman is a beautiful, big-hearted writer who mines her most central subject: her gorgeous, tempestuous, difficult mother, and the terrain of their shared life. The result is a testament to the power of love and family.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Washington Post columnist Altman (Poor Man's Feast) shares the intimate and fascinating story of her alternately loving, turbulent, and toxic relationship with her mother. Growing up in 1970s Forest Hills, Queens the only child of a publishing executive father and a former model and nightclub singer mother the author was sent conflicting messages: while her mother Rita critiqued her daughter's weight, clothing, and overall appearance, her father treated her to lunches at upscale restaurants and bought her a tweed suit and oversized coat. Altman adored her parents (who divorced after 16 years of marriage), but was nevertheless troubled by their idiosyncrasies, particularly those of her mother a narcissistic woman who was addicted to purchasing and applying makeup and obsessed with weight, persistently urging Altman to slim down, get her highlights done, and be more like her. Altman's relationships with others, meanwhile, would only heighten her mother's competitive nature: she disapproved of Altman's friends and lovers, is jealous of her relationship with Altman's father, and is irritated ("like lemon in a paper cut") by Altman's graphic designer wife Susan, even after 19 years. Throughout her life Altman struggles to balance devotion to her mother with a need to maintain boundaries for her own self-preservation, all of which comes to a moment of clarity when Altman decides to have children. Altman's memoir is an incisive look at complex mother-daughter attachments.
Customer Reviews
Want My Money Back
I cannot believe anyone could say they enjoyed this. This woman goes on and on and on and on about how much she hates her mother. It is pathetic and quite heartbreaking. I couldn’t wait to close it. I mean come on. You are well into your fifties, get over it. Forgive her. Enough already. My mother had Alzheimer’s for 10 years. We had a roller coaster relationship. But I made peace with it long ago and enjoyed our last years together more than anything I have ever known. This woman acts like a baby. I cannot believe I paid for this. I want my time and money back. Ugh.