Motherland

April 8, 2019
Washington Post columnist Altman (Poor Man’s Feast) shares the intimate and fascinating story of her alternately loving, turbulent, and toxic relationship with her mother. Growing up in 1970s Forest Hills, Queens—the only child of a publishing executive father and a former model and nightclub singer mother—the author was sent conflicting messages: while her mother Rita critiqued her daughter’s weight, clothing, and overall appearance, her father treated her to lunches at upscale restaurants and bought her a tweed suit and oversized coat. Altman adored her parents (who divorced after 16 years of marriage), but was nevertheless troubled by their idiosyncrasies, particularly those of her mother—a narcissistic woman who was addicted to purchasing and applying makeup and obsessed with weight, persistently urging Altman to slim down, get her highlights done, and be more like her. Altman’s relationships with others, meanwhile, would only heighten her mother’s competitive nature: she disapproved of Altman’s friends and lovers, is jealous of her relationship with Altman’s father, and is irritated (“like lemon in a paper cut”) by Altman’s graphic designer wife Susan, even after 19 years. Throughout her life Altman struggles to balance devotion to her mother with a need to maintain boundaries for her own self-preservation, all of which comes to a moment of clarity when Altman decides to have children. Altman’s memoir is an incisive look at complex mother-daughter attachments.

March 1, 2019

James Beard Award-winning blogger Altman always kept her distance from her self-centered, shopping-obsessed, overly made-up singer mother, Rita. Then Rita had a bad fall. Based on Altman's Washington Post column "Feeding My Mother."

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019
An acclaimed food writer and memoirist's account of the codependent relationship she had with her charming and outrageous--but also very difficult--mother. Altman (Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw, 2016, etc.) was raised by a beautiful Manhattan singer named Rita. Obsessed with makeup, clothes, and her youthful brush with fame, Rita was both narcissistic and overwhelming. Rather than accept her daughter as a girl who loved to wear suits and had no interest in the world of celebrity, Rita attempted to remake her in her own glamorous image, with results that were as humorous as they were painful. Indeed, the only time Rita would show her daughter the approval for which she hungered was when Altman dressed fashionably and flaunted her body. Deeply attached to each other but prone to endless fighting, Altman and her mother became each other's "intoxicant of choice" until the author finally moved from New York to New England to live with and then marry a woman named Susan. Over the next two decades, the author built a quiet, independent life apart from her mother, allowing her the space to forge her own identity. Yet she still connected with Rita daily by telephone and watched her spend money--which Altman quietly replaced--on the expensive makeup her girlish heart desired rather than the health care her aging body required. Then Rita suffered a debilitating fall that left her unable to "use the bathroom, organize her pills, or navigate her space in a wheelchair." Altman suddenly realized that, like it or not, the mother from whom she had struggled to break free and who she once thought was "unbreakable [and] unstoppable" was now totally dependent on her. Funny, raw, and tender, Altman's book examines the inevitable role reversals that occur in parent-child relationships while laying bare a mother-daughter relationship that is both entertaining and excruciating. An eloquent, poignant memoir.

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July 1, 2019
What is it about mothers and daughters? Can't they just get along? Not if they're Altman and her beautiful, narcissistic mother, Rita. A one-time model and television singing star, Rita seems to be a cross between Cruella de Vil and Norma Desmond. Never without makeup, she wants her writer daughter, who resembles her father, to look and dress like her?to be her, perhaps. No chance of that, of course, which only exacerbates the uneasiness of their relationship. A wonderful set piece about Altman as a teenager attempting to teach her preening mother tennis sums it up: The O.K. Corral with Tab and grosgrain headbands. Although this is Altman's memoir, Rita is definitely the star. Readers do learn bits and pieces about the author's life, but even then it's through Rita, who, for example, is furious that Altman comes out to her father before her; and, though Altman is in a committed, long-term relationship, Rita (naturally) dislikes her wife. Yet in the end, Altman calls her book a love story. And so, in its introspective, psychologically acute way, it is.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)