Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing

On the sentence level, this is fine. But structurally, it's repetitive and doesn't really arrive at the profound revelations all the hype suggests. Altman's mother is a horrible person. She is shallow, vain, narcissistic, childish, and cruel. And while Altman claims she's achieved independence from her mother, literally nothing in the book is evidence of that. She allows her mother to be awful and she caters to her every petty whim. The definition of dysfunctional and co-dependent. As Altman says, they're two New York, entitled, white, Jewish women who are more like spouses than like mother/daughter. The only one in this tale with any sense is Altman's wife, Susan, who sends Altman's mother back to New York when she arrives for Thanksgiving dinner and throws a tantrum because she's not the center of attention. Maybe I'm just burned out on memoirs, but the navel-gazing and self-absorption are getting to me.

Elissa Altman is the rare writer who seems to produce a gem with every sentence. Her prose is pitch-perfect and her eye for the telling detail is keen. Though her relationship with her narcissistic mother is difficult, and she's often on the receiving end of small, if not always intentional cruelties, her love and devotion to this vain and complex woman are heroic. Through it all Altman's wry humor and wit remain intact. This is a book of enormous heart and humanity. Quite simply, I loved it.

Note: Thank you to NetGalley, from whom I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.<br /><br /><br />Elissa Altman is a wonderful writer in the sense that with her words he enables the reader to fully picture the scenes, the people, the places about which she writes. In this case, I do feel like I know Elissa's parents, step-parents, Gaga (grandmother). I feel like I can picture both her mother's NYC apartment and Elissa's Connecticut cottage. There is no doubt, Elissa has a way with words. However... this is the second book I have read by this author and just as with the first one, I am not sure I get the point of this book. I kept waiting for the "so what?" We all have crazy mothers. I am sure I am turning into a crazy mother. But with a memoir such as this, I would expect some type of redemption or resolution or meaning drawn from the stories but to me it felt more like a few hundred pages of complaining about a narcissistic mother, and then it ends, seemingly because the writer has gotten to present day so she stops. It feels a bit self-indulgent and since she doesn't share any good, redeeming, loving memory of her mother instead of eliciting my sympathy that she might be asking for through this book, she instead brings out feelings of frustration and annoyance. <br />Elissa Altman is a talented writer and has a way with words - I just wish she used that talent and ability to produce books that are less for her own therapy and more for the entertainment of her readers. <br />

Motherland is a memoir by Elissa Altman about her relationship with her mother Rita, a former television singer. She talks about her time growing up with her and the relationship she has with her now. <br />I have a tense relationship with my own mother and I related to a lot of what Elissa Altman wrote about in her book. There were parts that angered me, made me laugh and several that made me sad. <br />This is a story about how life comes full circle and how it’s not always easy to coexist with someone you may love but not always like. <br /><br />I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway and am grateful to Ballantine Books for sending it to me for an honest review.

I was interested to read this book after hearing Altman speak about it on a podcast. What really piqued my curiosity was her description of her mother as a narcissist, but one who loved her.<br /><br />Having a mother with similar issues, my experience has been that you can never make them happy, nothing is ever enough, and they aren't really capable of genuine love or care, so I wondered what made Altman think this.<br /><br />She's certainly a good writer, but I found much of the narrative repetitive, a little rambling and quite melodramatic in parts - especially with her repeated claims that continuing to live with her mother, when she was a younger woman, would kill her. If she could tell that the relationship was harmful to that extent why continue the closeness and why is she still letting her mother press all her buttons.<br /><br />It was a little tiresome watching Altman obsessively allow herself to be repeatedly reeled in on her mother's line, and there was more than a hint of self-pity. Which I get - god knows, I really do - but at some point you have to step up and save yourself.<br /><br />Altman is a grown-up and strikes me as an intelligent woman, yet she seemed (and still seems) totally unable to extract herself from this co-dependent relationship and put a little emotional distance between herself and her mother, despite what must be years of therapy. She still seems to be seeking something that she will never get from the relationship - and surely her therapist has told her this. <br /><br />Her wife must be a saint.<br /><br />And three memoirs is probably too many - far too much navel gazing.

A memoir by a daughter about her relationship with her mother. The mother would probably be an okay person to have as a neighbour, an arm's-length friend or a distant relative, but you wouldn't want to be her only child. She's superficial, self-involved, needy, demanding and has little respect for boundaries. She's also obsessed with her appearance and makeup, she simpers around men, and she is determined to remain sexy and thin and stylish forever. Those are her core values. <br /><br />But the book is frustrating to read - not because of the ridiculous mother, but because of the daughter, who is telling the story. Why doesn't SHE have boundaries? Why does she let her mother yank her around like a puppet on a chain? Why can't she honour her own values? <br /><br />When I read a memoir, I want to find a journey, progress, movement. I don't want to find someone who spent her entire life in a rut of her mother's making. She knows the relationship is unhealthy. She analyzes it constantly. But she does nothing about it. She does not make any progress. <br /><br />In the Notes we learn that not only is the mother still living, but now she's living with the daughter and her wife, because of COVID. The mother is 84, the daughter is 56, her wife is 66. The mother wants to live to 103. I'd love to know if the mother has read the book.<br />

This memoir lays bare Elissa Altman's troubled relationship with her mother. I am from the upbringing that dictates "no one bad-mouths my mother but me", So you can listen to me complain about my mother as long as I want to rant, but you had better not chip in, because that's my mother! So, I find it difficult here to say anything about Altman's mother, but I don't have to, because I am the gentle listener to her incredibly well-written, well-articulated "rant" about her mother. But it is not a rant. It is a carefully documented and deeply analyzed, lovingly so, account of her life as her mother's daughter. I wholeheartedly recommend this memoir to readers of memoirs, to readers of exquisite prose, to readers seeking finely sculpted literary works. Thanks to Random House and netgalley for the arc of this book.

There is so much familiar to me in this memoir. OK I didn't have a former celebrity as a mother but she was Jewish and demonstrated the constant emotional blackmail seen in this book. <br /><br />I remain convinced that the Jewish mother trope is indeed a thing and reading this made me hurt in all the places that Elissa did. I had less forbearance, less "understanding" and more raging about the level my small mother could hit all my buttons. My mother, like Rita, starved herself and my weight was always included in her greeting. She bought me Slimming Magazine when I was pregnant.<br /><br />So, this read was painful for me. Brilliantly put together yet an emotionally flaying journey. <br /><br />There could almost be a book group on Jewish matriarchy - I would nominate this book along with Nobody Will Tell You This But Me (Bess Kalb) - Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant (Roz Chast), Remind Me Who I Am Again (Linda Grant), Tender at The Bone (Ruth Reichl), Living With Mother - Right to the Very End (Michelle Hanson)

Fascinating study of smotheringly close mother-daughter relationship where the mother clearly had some kind of personality disorder. There was love, and the daughter had to have distance from her mother to have her own life. The mother did not make this easy. <br />

**I received a Kindle version of this book as a Goodreads giveaway.**<br /><br />As someone with her own complicated mother-daughter relationship, this book hit home. I look at others with these magical, my-mom-is-my-best-friend experiences and can't help but feel like something is missing in my own life. Like Altman, I could never completely cut the cord and will always find my mother's life intertwined with my own. <br /><br />Altman's descriptions of her mom sometimes made me laugh out loud while other times cringe with empathy. I loved that her story wasn't told in a linear fashion, but instead jumped from adult to childhood to college and back, as if the book was a collection of her own therapy sessions.<br /><br />It's been a long time since I've read something that felt so honest and unembellished. Altman held nothing back in this memoir and the result is an absolutely wonderful read.