Mother Land: A Piercing Literary Drama of a Narcissistic Mother's Viselike Hold on Her Family

Mother Land: A Piercing Literary Drama of a Narcissistic Mother's Viselike Hold on Her Family

“Theroux possesses a fabulously nasty sense of humor.” — Stephen King, <i>New York Times Book Review</i><br />  <br /> 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 a selfish, petty tyrant. 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 one hundred, her brood struggles with and among themselves to shed her viselike hold on them.<br /><i>                  Mother Land</i> is a piercing portrait of how a parent’s narcissism impacts a family. While the particulars of his tale are unique, Paul Theroux encapsulates with acute clarity and wisdom a circumstance that is familiar to millions of readers.<br />  <br /> “Paul Theroux ladles a steaming cup of dysfunctional-family chowder in <i>Mother Land</i>.” — <i>Vanity Fair</i><br />  <br /><i>“An engrossing, emotionally tangled and often merciless examination of family and self . . . </i><i>Mother Land</i><i> is a bittersweet, brutally frank family saga that offers enough redemption to make the journey worth it.” — </i><i>Shelf Awareness</i>