I’ve pictured my May TBR here because this was one of the two books I picked up at the end of May, thinking I could finish them easily before the start of June and my 20 Books of Summer … only to find they both leaked through into June itself. Ah well, never mind: I HAVE started my 20 Books of Summer now, with the first one finished and the second on the go, and I enjoyed this unusual novel in the meantime (Having read the first two books on the TBR pictured, I chose between this and “Blue Boy” by number of pages, knowing I wouldn’t be able to finish “Isomania” in time!).
Jo McMillan – “Motherland”
(27 February 2020 – from Kaggsy at The Ramblings)
“We’ll visit a cattle-rearing station, a kindergarten, an agricultural museum, Buchenwald concentration camp.” The words ‘concentration camp’ came out loud and with too much enthusiasm. My mum ducked into her tea. (p. 34)
Well, I can’t say I’ve ever read a book set in Tamworth before; not far from where I am here and I’ve been there a few times. Jess and her mum are the only Communists in town, hawking the Morning Star on a Saturday and enduring taunts and insults and sometimes worse. They’re committed to the cause and as Jess grows up (she’s 13 at the start of the book, at university at the end) she joins a young Communist league in a neighbouring town. I love all the details of the meetings and internal politics
Ivan had changed since last night. He’s put on a ribbed navy jumper and black combat trousers, and looked military, in a Millets kind of way. (p. 216)
but, while they are amusing to an extent, there’s a scary and violent undercurrent – this isn’t a game and there are real people watching.
Jess and her mum get to experience Real Existing Socialism, as they put it, when Eleanor is invited to join a summer school in Potsdam. Soon they are going over every summer, Eleanor rising through the ranks, maybe more attracted by Peter and his daughter Martina, another half-family looking for its whole. Jess looks up to the older Martina and wishes she could be a rule-breaker, but she really isn’t. She’s aware of her mum’s relationship with Peter but everything is so difficult – the part where they think he might get to come to London for a conference is nail-biting.
As time wears on, Jess starts to become more her own person, and sometimes the mother-daughter role seems to swap. Eleanor is so committed and well-meaning, doing the things some of us probably wish we did ourselves, but also know it’s embarrassing, for example making sure to always apologise for British colonialism while waiting for takeaways. The characters around them shift and change, people are reassigned without warning and can slip away. Will Jess manage to defect as a teenager or will someone else go? The ending is ambiguous, but nicely so, the summers of Thatcherism before the fall of the Wall beautifully told, the details precise and sometimes a little uneasy (not one to read over your breakfast if you’re me).
I’m so glad Kaggsy sent me this book, very unusual and enjoyable, a portrait of a different time, one I can still remember (the fall of the Berlin Wall came while I was at university, so I’m a bit younger than Jess) and one which I don’t think has been written about so intimately.
Here’s Kaggsy’s more full and erudite review, including her personal experience of having a penpal from East Germany. And having re-read her review, I find my friend Luci’s mum was mentioned in the acknowledgements!
Laura
Jun 06, 2021 @ 13:08:20
This sounds great. Is it marketed as YA or adult fiction?
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Liz Dexter
Jun 06, 2021 @ 16:01:00
As far as I can see, it’s marketed as adult fiction, just with a teenage protagonist. But the mum is portrayed very finely and in detail, too and their relationship. I think you would enjoy it.
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Laura
Jun 06, 2021 @ 17:39:10
Brilliant!
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kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 06, 2021 @ 15:48:43
Aw, thanks for the kind words, Liz and I’m so glad you liked the book. I thought it was fascinating, and as you say very unlike most books I’ve read. It just really clicked and struck a chord with me! And wasn’t Luci’s connection interesting? 😀
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Liz Dexter
Jun 06, 2021 @ 16:06:00
Yes, very different indeed, and I was so chuffed to see Luci’s connection, I don’t know why the name didn’t ring a bell when I read that part in the first place!
She doesn’t seem to have written anything since, but when going on Amazon to check that, I noted your review is quoted on the description page for the book – fame indeed!
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kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 06, 2021 @ 16:06:44
Oh, I didn’t know that – how lovely! 😀
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Lola
Jun 06, 2021 @ 20:31:55
This sounds like a very interesting read for sure. I do like it when it’s a different kind of story.
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Liz Dexter
Jun 07, 2021 @ 05:19:27
Yes, I’ve never read anything quite like it (maybe Alexei Sayle’s autobiography but nothing fictional) and it was so interesting and different.
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JacquiWine
Jun 07, 2021 @ 10:03:06
At first, I thought this might be a collection of scripts or pieces from the excellent TV series, Motherland, starring Anna Maxwell Martin, but clearly it’s not! That aside, I can tell from your post how absorbed you were in the book. An interesting insight into the social history of the time.
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Liz Dexter
Jun 07, 2021 @ 11:40:12
Ah, no, this is a different thing altogether. Very absorbing, though, as you say!
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Wendy
Jun 07, 2021 @ 10:59:26
Sounds interesting! Kind of frightening too. I always wonder how people buy into that kind of thinking.
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Liz Dexter
Jun 07, 2021 @ 11:41:41
I suppose it’s like any kind of ideology in that the first principles will seem valid to some people but then others go on to twist it out of that first idea – certainly the original ideas of socialism and communism were very different from how things turned out. Jess is somewhat indoctrinated by her mum, and they come from a family line of communists, and it’s interesting to see that set against a whole country that thinks that way … or is supposed to.
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heavenali
Jun 07, 2021 @ 19:08:19
Ooh this does sound excellent. I think I would enjoy all that local politics stuff too.
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Liz Dexter
Jun 07, 2021 @ 20:16:43
Well, you said you fancied it on Kaggsy’s review, too … It is lovely being so local, as well.
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Book review – Jonathan van Ness – “Over the Top” | Adventures in reading, running and working from home
Jun 08, 2021 @ 09:00:33
buriedinprint
Jun 12, 2021 @ 15:54:26
isn’t it funny how, even as a voracious reader, there are still books set very close to the area that we call home that we haven’t yet read. You’d kinda think that propinquity would win out from the start, and then we’d branch out! Also #bookfriendsarebestfriends …how wonderful that you all are close enough to swap.
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Liz Dexter
Jun 13, 2021 @ 16:11:02
I do love my booky community – Kaggsy posted this to me but I have met her and swapped books in real life, and I will probably be passing this to Ali, who lives a few miles from me. And yes, always odd to find a local book I have never heard of!
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Book stats and best books of 2021 | Adventures in reading, running and working from home
Dec 31, 2021 @ 19:25:53
elkiedee
Dec 31, 2021 @ 20:13:57
I read the book via Netgalley, I think – I discovered before I read it but after I’d got hold of a copy that Jo McMillan was a postgrad student of my mum’s – she hadn’t done a first degree but she had spent a few years in China.
Later I discovered that one of my friends In London went out with the author for a while, some years ago. He used to live and work in Coventry and is a bit nervous that one of the characters in the book might be based on him (presumably one of the local activists). He hasn’t read it yet as far as I know. I keep meaning to look back through it
Another friend apparently had an upbringing with some similarities and I was recommending the book to her recently.
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elkiedee
Dec 31, 2021 @ 20:15:32
Also, there’s a Guardian article here – which mentions Jo McMillan’s 25th birthday in October 1990.
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Liz Dexter
Jan 01, 2022 @ 12:02:43
Excellent connection to the book, how marvellous! I’m sure you told me that at the time I read it but it must have been on another channel. I wonder if he was included!
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