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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
‘A fitting legacy left by a blazing talent’ Observer
‘A masterpiece’ Andrew O’Hagan, Guardian
‘Completely amazing’ Lucy Mangan, Stylist
‘A modern classic’ Daily Mail
‘Raw, compelling, wise and tender’ Dolly Alderton
‘Outstanding’ Jenny Colgan, Spectator
‘Razor-sharp, fearless and wonderful’ Adam Kay
‘Personal, political, and blazing with truth’ Melissa Harrison
‘Crammed with wit and intelligence’ Financial Times
‘Deeply tender and very funny’ Kathy Burke
‘Full of glinting pain, brilliant one liners and utter clarity’ Suzanne Moore
‘[Orr’s] masterpiece’ Evening Standard
‘Intense and moving’ Red
‘Remarkable’ Val McDermid, i
MOTHERWELL is a sharp, candid and often humorous memoir about the long shadow that can be cast when the core relationship in your life compromises every effort you make to become an individual. It is about what we inherit – the good and the very bad – and how a deeper understanding of the place and people you have come from can bring you towards redemption.
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
‘A fitting legacy left by a blazing talent’ Observer
‘A masterpiece’ Andrew O’Hagan, Guardian
‘Completely amazing’ Lucy Mangan, Stylist
‘A modern classic’ Daily Mail
‘Raw, compelling, wise and tender’ Dolly Alderton
‘Outstanding’ Jenny Colgan, Spectator
‘Razor-sharp, fearless and wonderful’ Adam Kay
‘Personal, political, and blazing with truth’ Melissa Harrison
‘Crammed with wit and intelligence’ Financial Times
‘Deeply tender and very funny’ Kathy Burke
‘Full of glinting pain, brilliant one liners and utter clarity’ Suzanne Moore
‘[Orr’s] masterpiece’ Evening Standard
‘Intense and moving’ Red
‘Remarkable’ Val McDermid, i
MOTHERWELL is a sharp, candid and often humorous memoir about the long shadow that can be cast when the core relationship in your life compromises every effort you make to become an individual. It is about what we inherit – the good and the very bad – and how a deeper understanding of the place and people you have come from can bring you towards redemption.
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Reviews
If you have or had a difficult mother this is the book for you. Difficult doesn't have to mean abusive. You can have a happy childhood with a mother who drives you mad
MOTHERWELL is an unflinching memoir of one family and a lost world. It is also an extended essay on how not to mother well and the terrible legacy that can leave
Bold, clear-eyed and often very funny
A fierce and tender reckoning: personal, political, and blazing with truth
Crammed with wit and intelligence . . . a clever, meticulous and intricate work. Although heart-rending at times, it is also surprisingly funny . . . has a generosity of tone that means as you read it you experience sudden flashes from your own past: slights, plights, triumphs, mad asides
A remarkable book . . . impassioned, angry, tender, pathetic, honest to a fault. MOTHERWELL is written at such a pitch of intensity you sometimes have to put it down just to get your breath back
A remarkable memoir, the candour of it . . . Having grown up working-class in Scotland, there are a lot of resonances
MOTHERWELL is a story about a girl, a family, a time, a place. But so much more. Fearlessly Deborah Orr works out how she was formed as she unpicks everyday dysfunction. Full of glinting pain, brilliant one liners and utter clarity, the sliver of ice in her heart melts. Sheer humanity shines out. I was astonished
Searching, truthful, shocking (and timely) . . . with a reporter's skill, she shows the interior life of her people. In the present climate, this book should be given out on the NHS . . . a masterpiece
Dauntless, quietly devastating, but not without seams of happiness and magnificent wit
Completely amazing
Brilliant . . . An excellent and timely slice of social reportage
Sharply intelligent and utterly unsentimental, MOTHERWELL is a fitting legacy left by a blazing talent
Raw, beautiful and truly insightful
Honest, at times harsh, but also deeply tender and very funny - this is a beautifully written memoir. It's my generation so evoked many unwanted memories including the three-day-week, boiled to death veg and masturbating skinheads. A great read for 'Common People' like me
MOTHERWELL is razor-sharp, fearless and wonderful
Deborah's honest and fearless spirit shines throughout MOTHERWELL. Her many struggles are told with wit and candour, but above all there is so much love in this book
Searing, candid, magnificently perceptive and lingeringly tragic. A modern classic
Vivid, visceral, uncompromising, electrifying in its candour
[Orr's] masterpiece . . . the story of her family but also a social commentary of Britain . . . a fascinating look into the childhood of one of our most important journalists
Raw, compelling, wise and tender
A poignant, beautiful and all-too-topical memoir. With the skill, delicacy and sharp wit her many fans know and love, Deborah Orr tells her tale of childhood: of class and mobility, of self-love and self-loathing, of dissatisfied mother and clever daughter, and of the dangerous, complex sacrifices which opportunity demands from a girl on the move in the late twentieth century. Are you a mother? Do/did you have a mother? Read it
An outstanding memoir . . . The writing is powerful and muscular; the bitterness raw and furious . . . as a legacy, this book will stand at least as long as Ravenscraig
A beautifully written portrait of a quintessential Seventies working-class childhood
Filled with observational brilliance and wit . . . beautiful. Brilliant . . . not just an intelligent and honest personal memoir, not just an examination of narcissism, interdependence and repression, but a conjuring of a time, a moment in British history, that may otherwise be lost entirely. It is also funny. As funny, it would seem from the obituaries, as the woman herself
A complex study of a family, childhood, and a town transformed
Sharp, funny, warm and memorable
Intense and moving
Love and understanding triumph over the difficult and painful memories. It is disconcertingly honest and self-revealing. You are unlikely to forget it
Utterly candid and staggeringly good, both as the history of a woman and the history of a place
Complex and moving, this is an honest take on the close ties that can bind, hold us back and also set us free