Mother Country Memoir of an Adopted Boy

by Harding, Jeremy

• ISBN13: 9781844676576
• ISBN10: 1844676579
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-11-22
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

When Jeremy Harding was a child, his mother, Maureen, told him he wasadopted. She described his natural parents as a Scandinavian sailor and a"little Irish girl" who worked in a grocery. It was only later, as Harding setout to look for traces of his birth mother, that he began to understand whohis adoptive mother really was-and the benign make-believe world shebuilt for herself and her little boy. Evoking a magical childhood spent intransit between west London and a decrepit houseboat on the banks of theRiver Thames, Mother Country is both a detective quest, as Harding searchesthrough the public records for clues about his natural mother, and a richsocial history of a lost London from the 1950s. Mother Country is a powerfultrue story about a man looking for the mother he had never known andfinding out how little he understood the one he had grown up with.

Author Biography

Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. His books include The Uninvited: Refugees at the Rich Man’s Gate, Small Wars, Small Mercies, and Mother Country.