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:
“O you will take whatever’s offered
And dream that all the world’s a friend,
Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If you are obliged to neglect any thing, let it be your chemistry. It is the least useful and the least amusing to a country gentleman of all the ordinary branches of science.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)