Motherwell - Deborah Orr

I think I will think about this book for some time as it resonates with me in all kinds of ways.  The author talks about her childhood, growing up in a small Scottish housing estate through to her mid twenties, with small tidbits about her marriage thrown in.   Being from a similar vintage as her, the cultural references made sense to me, and that feeling of wanting to get away from home at 18, heading off to University and trying to have a relationship with your parents as an adult.  Also the references to the Bureau - that piece of furniture that seemed to be in all our parents houses, holding all the important papers that you were never allowed to ferret around in or look at, yet once our parents have died you find yourself in all the bits of paper artifacts in its drawers and nooks and crannies.

I felt for her, that even when she was an adult living her own life, her mother still used every opportunity to disapprove of her choices and that you are left with the impression that she never felt particularly loved.   Sad too, that not long after the book was published she herself died of breast cancer, and never got to see the relationship from a greater distance of time, when she may have been more forgiving of her parents behavior. 5/5