John McGahern’s ‘The Lanes’ is an extract from a forthcoming memoir. It is an evocative piece – those leafy lanes of rural Ireland, the little schools, and wildly colourful characters are incisively etched. His mother is a gentle creature among the strong and not always pleasant members of his family. Father is a moody man who brings tension into the house.

“…in fits he could charm and seduce us….but could not sustain what he had brought about.”

The children of the house suffer from his rages and beatings when mother is away in hospital and not there to take the brunt. Teachers at the primary school are also quick to beat the children, and the miserable unexpected brutalities of a helpless child’s life are vividly drawn. Mother is somewhat dwarfed by louder and noisier characters until the very end of the piece when the little boy’s love for her is most movingly revealed.

Edmund White’s mother, Lila Mae, is at the centre of his memoir ‘The Merry Widow’. The Widow is a corset which the young Edmund is required to lace her into. The description of this occurrence, and his loathing of touching her, contains much too much information. This, I suppose, is a problem when writing about your mother. What might be a shared shudder with the reader if the description were of any other woman, becomes shocking when a mother’s privacy is invaded. I suppose one’s own mother springs to mind and a certain protectiveness comes into play. Lila Mae was a hard worker, which White duly credits her with, but he is often snide about her. At 14 he was sighing over her lack of finesse in keeping men interested, something he feels he is more adept at; in her old age, he recounts the tale of his nephew laughing at her and she not being aware of it. This piece is a fascinating but uncomfortable read.

One of the strongest pieces in the magazine is ‘The View From This End’ by Alexandra Fuller, part of a memoir about her time in Zambia. Fuller is a crusading journalist who gets into some trouble over an expose of corruption. Interestingly, it is her husband who is threatened with losing his permit if he does not get her under control, a patriarchal attitude which becomes searingly relevant when she becomes pregnant. There are difficulties during and after this pregnancy, not the least of which is a total disregard for female patients by medical staff. Fuller finds herself being treated exactly like the local women, patronised, left sitting (uncomfortably) as they are, and neglected. The piece has all the interest of different social attitudes, and familiarity with a different country and its ways. It is also a tender account of being a new mother.

Masha Gessen’s contribution is about breast cancer and its impact on her relationship with her mother. The two are estranged, the daughter feeling she has no link with her mother and is unlike her in every way. Until her mother dies of breast cancer. The cancer is caused by a mutating gene which Gessen has inherited, and which she in turn has probably passed on to her own daughter. She tells of the many women she knows through a support group who are afraid of having daughters or hate their own mothers because of the gene. In their terror of the illness, “blame is an unexpected temptation”.

Blame also plays its part in Paul Theroux’s ‘Mother Of the Year’. He writes of his family, he says, because big families are a rarity in modern society. Large families recall to his mind tribes of savages and it is soon clear why. His mother is a manipulative deceiving woman who delights in setting her children at one another’s throats. In his “complex and crazed” clan, they all seek to be mother’s favourite and they all talk about one another behind each other’s backs. He has always played his part in this until the death of his father. His mother agrees to turn father’s life support off, against Theroux’s wishes, and then takes the family off to dinner and leaves him to die alone. Theroux slips away and stays at the bedside. That death bed scene is an unforgettable and harrowing experience to share, and his mother’s “strange rapture” at being queen of the clan is appalling.

Equally harrowing, but more tender, is Ian McEwan’s ‘Lily’, an extract from a novel, not a memoir. A son visits his mother who is tumbling into mental deterioration after a series of small and invisible strokes. The piece is a discourse on time where youth is an episode and old age a return to childhood. The son’s attempts at conversation with his mother are painful and touching.

J.M. Barrie’s relationship with his mother is the subject of Rodrigo Fresan’s contribution, ‘Never NeverLand’ It centres on the effect of the death of his older brother on his mother – she goes completely to pieces and neglects the young Barrie. He dresses up as his brother and goes to his mother’s room with unhappy results which mark him for life and make of him a writer and escapist. Neatly, almost too neatly perhaps, Barrie learns that those who are “loved most will be those who never grow old, who never grow up”.

‘How To Stop Your Mother-In-Law From Drowning’ by Richard Beard is an unusual piece. It sets stereotypes about mothers-in-law, so easily accepted, against the sudden shocking reality of a mother-in-law’s death. It is peppered with typical mother-in-law jokes, and also examines the tensions in a son-in-law who knows his new ‘mother’ is right in thinking that he isn’t good enough for her daughter. These tensions prevent the pair from ever getting to know one another. Her reality as a much loved person only strikes him after she is dead, the last lesson she has to teach him – that he should make the most of people while they are still there.

All the pieces in the magazine are of a high standard of writing with many insights into that most complex of relationships between mother and child.

Marion Arnott lives in Paisley, Scotland. She was winner of the Phillip Good Memorial Prize For Women's Fiction 1998, CWA Short Dagger 2001 and shortlisted for CWA Short Dagger 2002. Work has appeared in Scottish Child, West Coast, Solander Magazine, Peninsula , QWF, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Books Ireland, Northwords, Chapman, Crimewave, and Datlow and Winding's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 15. Her short story collection 'Sleepwalkers,' was published in August, 2003 by Elastic Press. To visit Marion's Showcase on this website, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.