This Motherless Land
A Novel
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4.5 • 48 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
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NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"A vibrant coming-of-age story." — Charmaine Wilkerson
"I was completely immersed.” — Nita Prose
From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a stunning reimagining of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park: Split between England and Nigeria, two extraordinary cousins are set on vastly different paths as they come to terms with their shared family history—a masterful exploration of race, identity, and love.
Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.
Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.
But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.
Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Two cousins from starkly different backgrounds bond in this emotionally charged literary tour de force. Funke was living a privileged life in Lagos on the campus of the teaching hospital her Nigerian father taught at, vying with her brother for the attention of their eccentric English mother, when tragedy struck. Now, she finds herself shipped off to her mother’s ancestral home, the gloomy British manse known simply as The Ring, under the care of her cold and spiteful aunt. Yet there’s one bright spot: her joyously precocious cousin Liv. Author Nikki May’s carefully constructed narrative brilliantly illustrates how a family’s past choices can influence events for the following generations. We were totally enamored with the relationship between Funke and Liv, and we loved seeing how it grows and changes as we follow them across continents and time periods. This Motherless Land is a hauntingly beautiful look at the joys and trials of true friendship.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this intelligent family drama from May (Wahala), a British Nigerian girl is twice dislocated from home amid tragedies. Funke Oyenuga grows up in Lagos until she's nine, when, in 1978, her English mother and younger brother die in a car accident. Her Nigerian father then sends her to England, to live with her maternal grandparents, whom she's never met. Her older cousin, Liv, who also lives in the family home with her mother, Margot, eagerly welcomes Funke, though Margot resents the financial burden she places on the family. Margot treats Liv harshly, too, and dotes on her wild son, Dominic, who's away at boarding school. Funke accedes to pressure from the family to go by her middle name, Kate, and she excels at school. The story jumps to 1986 London, where Kate has secured a university scholarship and Liv, an aspiring model, is blackmailed by a fraudulent modeling scout following a racy photo shoot. After Kate refuses to give Liv her scholarship money to bail her out, Liv steals Margot's prized pearl necklace. More crises befall the family, which, in a lesser writer's hand, might play as melodrama, but May keenly portrays how Kate's relatives make her a scapegoat for their problems, resulting in her return to Nigeria. This is worth a look.
