Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing

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The school receptionist, moody and blunt towards many of the parents, but especially towards Julia. Cultural cannibals, she liked to call them, people so in love with another culture that they wanted to become a part of it. Expats in Paris who said things like My soul is French and really believed them, deeply. When it came to India, that desire for ingestion took the form of a devotion to faux-Hindu wisdom, declamations in praise of the “spiritualism” and “simplicity” of the people, and the burning of a great deal of incense. This is such an underrated novel. I keep searching for that smart Indian novel - one that doesn’t endlessly talk about quaint villages, steepling poverty, and happy slums. And this is one such novel. And funnily enough, it’s not even written by an Indian. 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. The acerbic and selfish leader of the "Alpha Mums", obsessed with compliments on her youthful appearance and energy. Extremely image-conscious, she pretends her marriage is perfect, but her husband Johnny treats her dismissively, and they divorce in the second series. She has two children, Manus and Georgie.

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. Favorite Quotes: The history of tyranny was the history of a damaged childhood - the child with power, of idiotic excesses and spite, which accounted for the irrationality and the violence. Political outrages and purges began as tantrums and ended as edicts. 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! The mother of a boy in the same year group as the other parents'. She also comes on the school trip, but gets confrontational with Liz when Liz accuses her son for being racist towards Meg's daughter Jade. 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.To those in her Cape Cod town, Mother is an exemplar of piety, frugality, and hard work. To her husband and seven children, she is the selfish, petty tyrant of Mother Land. She excels at playing her offspring against each other. Her favorite, Angela, died in childbirth; only Angela really understands her, she tells the others. The others include the officious lawyer, Fred; the uproarious professor, Floyd; a pair of inseparable sisters whose devotion to Mother has consumed their lives; and JP, the narrator, a successful writer whose work she disparages. As she lives well past the age of 100, her brood struggles with and among themselves to shed her viselike hold on them. Is that enough? Just to have faith that things might change? Or should we do things, to make them change?” Julia’s builder, on whom she develops a crush and flirts with awkwardly despite his indifference (and inflated invoicing). In an interview, Mr. Theroux stated that 60% of the book is autobiographical, and how can it not be as it seemed he was witnessing my childhood, the various aspects of growing up under Mother's watchful and seemingly controlling nature, observations that were spot on. In Mother/land, an interest in divisions and multiplicity permeates both form and content — a focus that is perhaps best illustrated in the stylistic rendition of the title itself. Lima’s simple slash symbol explodes the word “motherland” into several layers of encounters with grief. Thematically, Lima grapples with a series of dualities: past and present, Brazil as her homeland and America as her new land, identities as an immigrant and mother. Her poems construct a smooth, moving interplay between autobiography, national history, and anticipation of the future for her son.

While Rachel would define herself as a modern, western, woman with the ability to stand up for herself, she comes to find that she can learn from Swati. And Swati makes changes in her own life based in part on how she views her daughter in law and son’s relationship. 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. I have read many books that take place in different parts of India and somewhat expected to read the traditional new wife under the mother in law’s rules story but this one fell outside of that trope. Told in dual POVs of both Rachel and her mother in law, Swati, we are present when Swati shows up one day to live with Rachel and her husband Dhruv. Initially the pair of women are predictable in their actions and thoughts but it is not long before we see them each being affected by the other.

There isn’t much of a plot, but if you like character-based novels, MOTHER LAND is a seething, full cup for your Schadenfreude enjoyment. It is long, even exhausting with the boiling rage overflowing and ceaseless, at times repetitive. But, the writing is first class, and the emotional turmoil is authentic and gasp-inducing. Jay is likely the most insightful, although the other writer, Floyd (a bed-wetter as a child) is the most intellectually privileged, whose scholarly put-downs and schemes make for a perilously engaging scoundrel worth a blue ribbon for best wolf. One of the best books I've read al year, this short collection was powerful and heartfelt and moving and beautiful. It helped me understand immigration and motherhood and even the USA a little better. 'When they come for us on the 7 train' was heartbreaking but I think my favorite was PB&J: Another incident where Rachel attends an expat get together. They too have Indian husbands and ‘happily’ live here and speak ill about the city/country/culture. One of them says the below statement and Rachel just sits and listens, no response, only "her face had drained of blood." With fury, rage and spite, it seems. Theroux’s new novel Mother Land has as an epigraph the famous lines from WB Yeats’s “Remorse for Intemperate Speech”: “Great hatred, little room, / Maimed us at the start. / I carry from my mother’s womb / A fanatic heart” – which pretty much sums up the tone of the book. Stephen King in the New York Times has described Mother Land as “an exercise in self-regarding arrogance and self-pity” (which is certainly one way to read it), though he also admitted that he enjoyed the book “against my will”.

As Swati's later reflects, "They had seen each other." I love that line. 'I see you' is a powerful statement. One thing I'd like to be honest with you that as I'm from India, Portuguese language I'm not familiar with but I enjoyed the book so heartily. Mother” – she is never named, her family of origin and pre-marital life sketched so lightly as to suggest a wilful, defiant incuriosity – is almost without redeeming features: spiteful, devious, petty, mean, treacherous. Maybe her most damaging characteristic is her ability to foster division among her six children (the seventh, Angela, died in infancy and is therefore venerated), whose squabbles, estrangements and reconciliations are constantly being reconfigured in new patterns. Her methods of control – frequently likened by Jay to those of a brutal dictator – rely on constant wrong-footing, the capricious dispersal and withholding of favours and rewards, the sudden thump of a punishment, usually undeserved. Her ends are obscure, and are perhaps simply the pursuit and retention of power. One can read Mother Land in a state of appalled fascination Julia’s uninvolved husband and the father of her two children. Paul only appears on the phone to Julia, making excuses for why he cannot help with the children, until the final episode of series three. Paul’s mother, who takes more looking after than the children do. She appears in both Christmas specials.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 a b Martinson, Jane (6 October 2016). "BBC's Motherland to return as full series". The Guardian . Retrieved 25 October 2016. It’s a tough act to pull off, but Franqui pulls it off. I loved the way the relationship developed between Rachel and Swati. And that’s what is the heart of the book. 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.