Mother Land: A Novel

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Savageau’s work signals the reemergence of a people who have been described as “hiding in plain sight. Even her late husband, whose death kickstarts the novel, was so alienated from the reality of his life that he developed an alter ego, the minstrel in blackface who was the subject of Theroux’s short story Mr Bones. repetitive: in the beginning, she establishes Rachel and Swati through evident distinguishing factors simply in the way the two speak and interact and live and dress and everything, but this would only be purposeful and appropriate for the beginning and the beginning only; throughout the story, over halfway through the book, the author seemed to keep pestering the reader by repeating the cultural differences that we already know? Eland books open out our understanding of other cultures, interpret the unknown, reveal different environments as well as celebrating the humour and occasional horrors of travel. Mother Land is a minutely remembered description of a childhood on an Aegean island, marked by the furious opposition of hostile yet neighbouring cultures.

While Rachel’s digressive, dishy narration and keen eye for cultural details contrast with her initial bumbling, Franqui smartly shows how Rachel recognizes her limits. When I’d had enough of people, I yearned to build a hut and live on one of them, alone, separate and untouched by a world that, even at that age, seemed capricious and delinquent beyond reckoning. The narration moves between Rachel and Swati's perspectives, giving readers a chance to grasp the cultural expectations of each and to sympathize with both of them.

But the ex-pat Americans sense of adventure is sorely tested when her mother-in-law, Swati, suddenly arrives from Kolkataa thousand miles awayalone, with an even more shocking announcement: shes left her husband of more than forty years and is moving in with them. Mother Land sometimes reads like a romance (and even features some racy scenes as Swati gives herself permission to explore her sexuality, which she never prioritized during her marriage). I fell, hard, for the boy under the drain pipe, the whale’s word for world, the slapping tails of children, the hummingbird in the refrigerator, the cathechist with knife in her teeth, the wife spraying breast milk at the breakfast table, the woodchuck too busy for crucifixions, the piano baptized in molasses, the parakeet’s family jewels, the leathered and lathered Doc Martened butch leading her woman around the dance floor, the lightning that converses with fireflies, and everyone, everything that busts out of the gamebag and into Cheryl Savageau’s poetry.

Thus, Franqui resurrects the age-old struggle between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law—and topples it with a spot-on exploration of what it means to stand up against other people’s expectations. At this, Brenner beamed, his already-wide face stretched further across the thick bones of his skull. One can read Mother Land, then, in a state of appalled fascination, the transgression of full-on family hatred licensed, but also safely displaced on to another family.Also, there were many deeper themes that a book club could discuss - cultures clashing, family clashing, marriage clashing. Rachel and Swati clash over Swati’s insistence on hiring extra domestic help, Rachel’s penchant for stiff drinks, and, of course, the question of when and how a daughter-in-law should be allowed to say no to her mother-in-law. Suddenly these two strong-willed women from such very different backgrounds are alone together in a home that each is determined to run in her own way-a situation that ultimately brings into question the very things in their lives that had seemed perfect and permanent .