Mother Country
Memoir of an Adopted Boy
Published on 22. November 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-84467-657-6 (ISBN)
Description
When Jeremy Harding was a child, his mother, Maureen, told him he was adopted. She described his natural parents as a Scandinavian sailor and a "little Irish girl" who worked in a grocery. It was only later, as Harding set out to look for traces of his birth mother, that he began to understand who his adoptive mother really was-and the benign make-believe world she built for herself and her little boy. Evoking a magical childhood spent in transit between west London and a decrepit houseboat on the banks of the River Thames, Mother Country is both a detective quest, as Harding searches through the public records for clues about his natural mother, and a rich social history of a lost London from the 1950s. Mother Country is a powerful true story about a man looking for the mother he had never known and finding out how little he understood the one he had grown up with.
Reviews / Votes
Harding is a conjurer. Give him a long-since demolished stairwell, and he'll give you a world-its sound, its smell, the feeling that you could stumble upon it still. -- Rachel Cooke * Observer * Stunning. -- Amanda Heller * Boston Globe * Beautifully written, funny and sad, this book is simply captivating. -- Cressida Connolly * Daily Telegraph * Fluid and invigorating ... a delicate and absorbing account of Harding's investigation into the circumstances of his adoption. -- John Palattella * Nation * Harding's story is that of an adopted boy growing up in London, and his decision later to search for his natural mother. Readers get a detailed chronicle of the search and its ramifications, turning up hidden facets of the family Harding thought he knew. * Library Journal * An able, imaginative work of kinship and family. * Kirkus * Its colorful, insightful revelations about his adoptive parents and compelling discoveries about his birth mother give this slender memoir a special magic and beauty that will grip the reader long after the final page is turned. * Publishers Weekly *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 193 mm
Width: 130 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
249 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84467-657-6 (9781844676576)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2020
Verso Books
€17.49
Available for download
Person
Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. His books include The Uninvited: Refugees at the Rich Man's Gate, Small Wars, Small Mercies, and Mother Country.