Mother Country (by Libby Purves)

(Amazon UK link)

'Mother Country' is the most recent novel by Libby Purves, and while I enjoyed it, it's probably my least favourite. Whereas her earlier books were character-based light romantic novels, this one is somewhat harder-hitting, set in modern times but almost reminding me of Catherine Cookson in style.

It opens with a harsh prologue set in 1974. A young American bursts down the door of a dirty squat in London, and rescues a crying baby - his son - from a house of drugs and squalor. Shortly afterwards he wins a court battle to gain custody of the child, without any difficulty, then takes him back to the USA.

The rest of the book takes place 27 years later. Alex, the baby of the first chapter, has been raised by his grandparents. His mother, we're told, died of a drugs overdose shortly after the events of the prologue, and his father died in strange circumstances a couple of years later.

Alex is now a highly successful computer guru, working in a large corporation sorting out software bugs. He sometimes hankers to know more of his English relatives, idolising what he knows of the UK; yet so far has been a bit scared of what he might find, and so has not done anything other than dream. Suddenly he's given an assignment to sort out a major system problem in the UK. So he takes a week's leave and - when he's completed the job - begins to explore his roots.

'The Times' claims that this is a 'well-paced detective story', according to one of the reviews on the back of the book. I don't quite know how they came to that conclusion. It's true that Alex is searching for his roots, and that it takes a while before anything much is discovered. It's also true that he is amazed when he discovers some of the truth about his past. However there is no detecting to speak of; he gives the job to a genealogist he meets, and by the time he receives her results, it was fairly obvious to me what he was going to discover. I think it would be difficult to miss, since the author drops plenty of hints.

My own view is that it's an issue-based book which - in a few years - will be considered an excellent historical novel, although I find it hard to consider anything as 'history' which happened since the Millennium! It gives some good insights into US/UK cross-cultural differences, and also shows the power of the Internet for those wishing to seek out long-lost friends and relatives.

While the early part of the book seems to focus on the horrors of drug addiction, with Alex born an addict, there is an implication that many of the druggies of the 1970s became the alternative therapists of the 1990s. Some of the catchphrases taught to recovering addicts are questioned, and the reasons for taking up drugs are mentioned. Alternative medicine is taken for granted, and some interludes in a 'healing centre' show this in practice, with a mixture of realism and stereotype.

There are also important cameos of problems suffered by people in this period, in particular farmers whose stock had to be slaughtered during the foot and mouth epidemic. When Alex arrives the papers are full of stories of burning livestock, and the genealogist who helps him is a farmer's wife, desperate to have a bit of income through internet-based work. Problems with the education system are mentioned too, with the farmer's son having a physical handicap and being excluded from school for safety reasons. The climax of the book involves a significant world event which helps the characters get their feelings into perspective, and leads on to a satisfactory and hopeful conclusion for Alex.

As ever, Libby Purves creates likeable and realistic characters, and I found myself caring about most of them, including Alex. He comes across as a charming young man, culturally naive but eager to learn. His dreams about the 'mother country' are soon shattered by the general gloom and critical nature of Brits, the boring food he's given, and the poor quality of some of the hotels he stays in. Yet the longer he's there and the more he explores, the more he finds to attract him. He's open-minded enough to accept that he's sometimes wrong about his preconceived ideas.

I also liked the way that the plot was carefully crafted amongst events that I remember, and set in places that can still be visited. Alex goes to see the abandoned Millennium Dome, for instance; while I'm not a Londoner I'm fairly certain the details of his journey in the Underground are accurate, and the friendly worker he meets there is probably based on somebody real.

I liked too the lack of descriptive passages. Libby Purves has a style which is light and succinct: she conveys the impressions of what people see without needing to describe everything in lengthy detail. Since Alex is new to England, she includes a little more description than she does in previous books, but I didn't feel that any of it was irrelevant or overdone.

Libby Purves has a particular gift for writing about children, and I was a little disappointed that the few children in this book only featured as extras, albeit significant ones to some of the adults. Perhaps that was inevitable, given the subject matter.

More significantly, before Alex flies to the UK there's some fairly complex business-talk, and also a fair amount of technical discussion. Neither of these particularly interested me; however despite skimming a little I found some of the computer-talk not just dull but unrealistic. I'm not technical myself, but I've been around 'techies' and 'geeks' sufficiently to know the way they talk, and some of the ways modern system problems and bugs are solved. The computer discussions in this book seemed to me to have some parts out of the 1980s, and did not ring entirely true. This was particularly noticeable as it contrasted with the way it was set amongst entirely believable places and events.

I also found the book to have rather more bad language than I like, particularly in the first chapter. It was intended to shock, to contrast the horror of Alex's early days with the reasonably happy childhood he had with his grandparents; perhaps it was realistic. But it nearly put me off reading the book altogether, although I'm glad I kept going.

There was a minor inconsistency that slightly bothered me early in the book, too. Alex, it's stated, has never before left the USA. Yet when he's given the job in the UK, he's able to fly there the following day. No mention is made of the impossibility of organising a passport at such short notice!

'Mother Country' is a very well-written book. At just over 300 pages, I read it easily in a couple of days. Despite my reservations, I was eager to know what happened, and found I could relate to Alex - and some of the minor characters - pretty well. It didn't move me emotionally as some of this author's other books do, and it wasn't the kind of character-based novel I enjoy the most, but that probably means it would appeal to a wider audience. It certainly contained some thought-provoking cultural comments, and I expect I'll read it again in a few years.