MOTHERLAND

An acclaimed food writer and memoirist’s account of the codependent relationship she had with her charming and outrageous—but also very difficult—mother.

Altman (Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw, 2016, etc.) was raised by a beautiful Manhattan singer named Rita. Obsessed with makeup, clothes, and her youthful brush with fame, Rita was both narcissistic and overwhelming. Rather than accept her daughter as a girl who loved to wear suits and had no interest in the world of celebrity, Rita attempted to remake her in her own glamorous image, with results that were as humorous as they were painful. Indeed, the only time Rita would show her daughter the approval for which she hungered was when Altman dressed fashionably and flaunted her body. Deeply attached to each other but prone to endless fighting, Altman and her mother became each other’s “intoxicant of choice” until the author finally moved from New York to New England to live with and then marry a woman named Susan. Over the next two decades, the author built a quiet, independent life apart from her mother, allowing her the space to forge her own identity. Yet she still connected with Rita daily by telephone and watched her spend money—which Altman quietly replaced—on the expensive makeup her girlish heart desired rather than the health care her aging body required. Then Rita suffered a debilitating fall that left her unable to “use the bathroom, organize her pills, or navigate her space in a wheelchair.” Altman suddenly realized that, like it or not, the mother from whom she had struggled to break free and who she once thought was “unbreakable [and] unstoppable” was now totally dependent on her. Funny, raw, and tender, Altman’s book examines the inevitable role reversals that occur in parent-child relationships while laying bare a mother-daughter relationship that is both entertaining and excruciating.

An eloquent, poignant memoir.