Mother Land

The first part of this book is very difficult to get through. It is upsetting to read that anyone has such terrific hatred for an eighty-five-year-old woman. By the end of this book, the reader must wonder why anyone would have such a person in their life. The book seems autobiographical though it is labeled as a work of fiction. But at over five-hundred pages, clearly the writer has had this work bottled up in him for an age. It comes spilling out and over the rest of this highly dysfunctional family. By turns vitriolic and amusing, the narrator has a clear eye for how a family can be so out of control. In Mother Land, the matriarch manipulates each one of her children so that her reign as the center of their chaos is completely controlled to her advantage. While mothers are not supposed to play favorites, it is clear by the end of this tale that some children are actively despised. This is a hard book to read, but it’s a truthful one about family dynamics run amok.