Mother Tongue
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
What does it mean when the identity out of which one builds a life turns out to be a lie? What is the impact on one's self and those one loves? Mother Tongue emerges from the fires of shocking loss, betrayal and grief-tested love.
'Mother Tongue is a profound and moving novel that asks complex questions with such crystal clarity they seem simple. Are we formed by our genes? Our history? Or do we make ourselves? How do we lose each other? More importantly: how do we find each other?' — Sophie Cunningham
'Mother Tongue is a tender and sensitive story about family secrets, loss and recovery from loss; a wise and lyrical meditation on the nature of love.' — Gail Jones
'Fabulous...The story had me captivated from the start and how she wove all the family histories of the main characters together was extraordinary. She wrote with such compassion and understanding that part of me wondered if some of it was a true story!' — Victoria Jefferys, Gleebooks Blackheath
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kornblatt (The Reason for Wings) marks a 20-year comeback with a perfectly crafted novel featuring a middle-aged woman who discovers she was kidnapped as an infant. Nella Pine, a writer and teacher, tells the reader how she's learned at 45 that Ruth, the woman she thought was her mother for her whole life, stole her from a Pittsburgh hospital nursery. Ruth then fled to Australia, where she gave Nella a good life. In flashbacks, the reader sees how Nella and Ruth share a home with an affectionate, childless widow who treats the two strangers like family. After Ruth is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she writes a confession to Nella about her crime, revealing the facts about Nella's birth family. Nella finds the letter after Ruth's death and, after recovering from the shock, finally makes sense of the constant state of subterfuge that shadowed their lives in Australia. As Nella reclaims her birth name, Naomi, she reflects on her deceased husband, who was separated from his unwed birth mother as an infant by the Catholic Church, and considers how loss tied them together. Kornblatt imbues her narrator's pursuit of self-identity with carefully measured prose: "I came upon the facts of my existence as one who returns to her home in the midst of a burglary: here is the shattered glass, the rifled drawers, the thief with the booty still cradled in her guilty arms." This author's worthy return is full of grace and substance.
