Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing

Washington Post columnist Altman (Poor Man’s Feast) shares the intimate and fascinating story of her alternately loving, turbulent, and toxic relationship with her mother. Growing up in 1970s Forest Hills, Queens—the only child of a publishing executive father and a former model and nightclub singer mother—the author was sent conflicting messages: while her mother Rita critiqued her daughter’s weight, clothing, and overall appearance, her father treated her to lunches at upscale restaurants and bought her a tweed suit and oversized coat. Altman adored her parents (who divorced after 16 years of marriage), but was nevertheless troubled by their idiosyncrasies, particularly those of her mother—a narcissistic woman who was addicted to purchasing and applying makeup and obsessed with weight, persistently urging Altman to slim down, get her highlights done, and be more like her. Altman’s relationships with others, meanwhile, would only heighten her mother’s competitive nature: she disapproved of Altman’s friends and lovers, is jealous of her relationship with Altman’s father, and is irritated (“like lemon in a paper cut”) by Altman’s graphic designer wife Susan, even after 19 years. Throughout her life Altman struggles to balance devotion to her mother with a need to maintain boundaries for her own self-preservation, all of which comes to a moment of clarity when Altman decides to have children. Altman’s memoir is an incisive look at complex mother-daughter attachments. (Aug.)