Mother Country (2002) is a novel by Libby Purves about a young American computer expert who goes in search of the relatives of his biological father, a teenage heroin addict in 1970s London when she had him who was pronounced an unfit mother and who died soon after giving birth to him. Raised by his paternal grandparents, the young man has never been to England again after being carried off to the United States by his father, who also died young.
Mother Country explores the culture clash between the two nations, drug addiction and rehabilitation, family secrets, and the will to move on in life.
Famous quotes containing the words mother and/or country:
“Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent’s shadow. Our mother’s faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I do not believe I am exaggerating in affirming that the empire of Russia is a country whose inhabitants are the most miserable on earth, because they suffer at one and the same time the evils of barbarism and of civilization.”
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)