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:
“Mother love has been much maligned. An over mothered boy may go through life expecting each new woman to love him the way his mother did. Her love may make any other love seem inadequate. But an unloved boy would be even more likely to idealize love. I don’t think it’s possible for a mother or father to love a child too much.
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—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“[F]rankly ... it was perfectly true that I had, for over a year, expressed the opinion that Indo-China should not go back to France but that it should be administered by an international trusteeship. France has had the country ... for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning.... France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indo-China are entitled to something better than that.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)