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Mother's Girl
Spine creased and leaning, cover worn, owner's inscription. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.
160 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1988
7 people want to read
About the author
Elaine Feinstein
72 books52 followersElaine Feinstein was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as an editor for Cambridge University Press (1960-62), as Lecturer in English at Bishop's Stortford Training College (1963-6), as Assistant Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Essex (1967-70), and as a journalist.
She has contributed to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement, and was formerly Writer in Residence for the British Council in Singapore and Tromsø, Norway.
Of Russian-Jewish ancestry, she has been influenced by Russian writers, especially Marina Tsvetayeva and Anna Akhmatova.
She is the author of a number of plays for television and radio and several biographies, including singer Bessie Smith, writer D. H. Lawrence, Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and Anna Akhmatova.
She has contributed to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement, and was formerly Writer in Residence for the British Council in Singapore and Tromsø, Norway.
Of Russian-Jewish ancestry, she has been influenced by Russian writers, especially Marina Tsvetayeva and Anna Akhmatova.
She is the author of a number of plays for television and radio and several biographies, including singer Bessie Smith, writer D. H. Lawrence, Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and Anna Akhmatova.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 16, 2020
Credit to Feinstein for tackling some difficult themes. One is the Holocaust, or more specifically, the Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivors and the complexity of their experience and subsequent lives. Another is the experience of women in post-War England as they break through some gender barriers - entrance to university, sexuality, independence - and are held back by others. A third theme, and one of more contemporary importance, is women choosing to remain in abusive relationships.
Even greater credit to Feinstein for having the chutzpah to attempt a sweeping saga of two half-sisters' lives as the vehicle to explore these themes, covering from late-1930s Hungary (Halina) and early-1950s California (Lucy) to the funeral of their mutual father in 1980s London. What a monumental task! Success would put this work alongside The Grapes of Wrath or Gone With The Wind.
Unfortunately, the attempt fails, and the result is doubly disappointing because the elements are all there, the literary talent was available, but the effort was inadequate. This bold project was simply never going to succeed in a mere 160 pages of generously-sized text.
Why is it so short? The strong sense I get is that Feinstein had started with the first sister's story but, by the time that had been written, Feinstein had lost interest, quickly knocked together Lucy's back story and a framing device, and ordered it to be published warts and all. It's as if Feinstein so deeply empathises with Halina's desperation to extract love and approval from brilliant but damaged men – first her womanising father Leopold, then her depressive lover Christopher, then her abusive husband Janos – that when Halina opts for the diazepam safety of Bob Hessel's domestic devotion ("Poor, nervous Bob"), Feinstein herself becomes demoralised, and Halina's narrative stalls.
Feinstein then turns to Lucy's story, but it comes out in choking little gobs of venomous spittle and is finished in just 19 pages, giving no scope whatsoever for Lucy's development as a character. Feinstein even forgets to give Lucy an American voice (just two example: Americans call it "gas", not "petrol", and if they're angry they're "pissed", not "pissed off").
With Lucy's shallow narrative exhausted, Feinstein gives Halina the microphone again so she rattle off the Leo back story . Not far to go; come on, keep writing. Return to the original frame: seven pages to cover the half-sisters going to the funeral. Yes, I see the end! Oh, wait: I still haven't explained the most important element of all . There: finished at last. Take it away from me.
Where was the proofreader? I found at least four obvious errors. But it should never even have got to proofing stage; where was Feinstein's editor? Where was the advice, "This is an awesome first draft, great ideas, big themes, but needs a lot more work"? A structural edit: "The framing device isn't credible, let's come up with a different approach." Maybe even: "Take a break. Go back to your greatest skill, poetry. Let this one rest for a few years. Then come back with vigour and fill it out." To be blunt, Mother's Girl is undercooked, and its great themes remain hard and indigestible.
For example, why do women stay in, return to, or even seek out abusive relationships? This is such a complex question, and Halina offers the perfect opportunity to explore it. How did Halina's childhood – her charismatic father, her missing mother, her orthodox but dull foster-parents – contribute to her problematic adult life? Why would a highly intelligent and fiercely independent woman prefer abusive men?
Wow, this is superb writing (although a copy editor might correct the punctuation, especially the missing commas), and goes to the heart of why at least some women are attracted to such men. Indeed, Halina later describes that marriage to Janos as "like feeding a vampire". So, what's it like to relinquish such excitement and danger, and escape to normality with Bob? Alas, Feinstein dodges the question by having Halina simply say to Lucy:
OK, I get that Halina's life with Bob is a narrative desert that Feinstein needs to avoid. Nonetheless, I want Halina to reflect more deeply on what this mere happiness with Bob (not the "joy" she felt with Janos) has meant. Is her "companionable calm" the more rational and desirable state? If Halina is capable of such deep insights into her relationship with Janos, why does Feinstein not give her the opportunity to explore what it was in Halina's own personality that attracted her to these destructive men? Is Halina's attraction to powerful but flawed father-figures something innate, or a direct product of her early childhood and the (flawed) relationship of her parents, or a symptom of the deep harm the Holocaust inflicted on the survivors and their families?
Feinstein raises – but baulks at exploring – the issue of complicity, yet this is central to an understanding of the Hungarian Holocaust that Halina and Leo escape from. I knew a little about war hero Raoul Wallenberg (there's a park in my home city that commemorates him), but this review led me to read more. In April 1944, Joel Brand struck a "blood for goods" deal with Eichmann to save one million Jews, but the Allies rejected the offer and arrested Brand. Kastner was more successful: his deal with Eichmann resulted in over 1,600 Jews escaping by train to Switzerland in June 1944. History regards Brand as a hero, though he remained heartbroken even up to his death in 1964 over his failure to save those additional lives; Kastner, by contrast, was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1957 for having "sold his soul to the devil" (according to the judge in his libel case, even though this judgement was overturned on appeal).
So is it ok to collaborate with the enemy if the net outcome is (or could be) a positive one? It seems to depend on the degree of personal benefit. Kastner was hated not so much for the deal itself, but because his family and his village were favoured when it came to selecting the survivors. There seems little doubt where Feinstein sits on this. .
It's hard to feel sympathy for any of the characters Feinstein has created in Mother's Girl, as all those with significant roles are deeply flawed. (The one exception is Halina's son David, but he gets just two lines of dialogue and we learn almost nothing about him.) In fact, there's an essay waiting to be written on how Feinstein constructs every situation to depict men so horribly (typically as either abusers or inseminators) even as she creates female characters who have agency in their own misery. For example, Lucy hints that some of her own mother's "more than four or five" pregnancies were terminated because her dancing career was more important, and adds: "Her first husband, I think he tried to persuade her ... she didn't like him leaving, and she thought that was maybe why he went. Men like to pass on the old genes don't they." Really? Sounds to me like the poor bastard just wanted to settle down and raise a family, and got tired of waiting for narcissistic Joannie to stop prancing around.
I mentioned the urgent need for a structural edit, and this was for me the novella's greatest flaw. The frame story is a perfectly reasonable approach: Leo's funeral serves to bring Halina and Lucy together, and Lucy begs Halina to help her understand the father she has always hated, while Halina begs Lucy to tell her about the sister she knows so little about. And at the funeral itself, the two meet someone who might be able to tell them more, not just about Leo but about Halina's "lost" mother. That's all fine.
First problem: Lucy, we're told, is sleep-deprived after a long flight, yet somehow she's able to stay awake (but silent) while Halina reminisces about her failed romances for at least 10 hours (4pm until dawn the next morning). Then Lucy has a long, mostly uninterrupted rant. And as the sun rises, her voice failing, Halina starts up again. Does Lucy finally begin to see a more complex Leo emerge? No.
Second problem: when Halina starts her tale, the narrative switches to the first person. While this works well for nine pages, Feinstein can't keep up the ongoing conceit (i.e. that Halina is saying all this to Lucy) and lapses into narrating directly to the reader. Now, if I'm writing a first-person narrative for the reader, I can be as detailed as I like: the colour of the sky, the things on the table, the actual words people say. But if the narrative represents what I'm saying aloud to someone else, such detail is no longer credible. It's simply absurd that Halina would say the following to Lucy:
If you're going to tell the story directly to the reader, you need to add a transition marker of some sort. In film, the image can wobble and dissolve into a new view, which the audience understands as entering into the person's memory (often with a voice-over narrative to explain time, place etc). In the written story, there are similar tricks. It's important, because the device takes us from Halina sitting in her chair at home talking to Lucy, to Halina sitting within her memory talking to us.
This omission is nowhere more obvious than when Halina gives us, word for word, seven pages of Leo's oral testimony to her. Here we should be entering Leo's memory rather than relying on Halina to remember his exact words. It's simply poor writing, and easily corrected by an editor. Again I ask: where were they?
My rating: I need to do a reboot of my algorithms, but this novella currently ranks 3,080 in my list of the world's greatest fiction, with a score of 69%. That's enough to just scrape 4 stars. With greater effort by both publisher and writer, it could have been so much higher, which is why I felt compelled to write this review.
Like all her characters, this novella is initially compelling but ultimately disappointing. What a shame.
Even greater credit to Feinstein for having the chutzpah to attempt a sweeping saga of two half-sisters' lives as the vehicle to explore these themes, covering from late-1930s Hungary (Halina) and early-1950s California (Lucy) to the funeral of their mutual father in 1980s London. What a monumental task! Success would put this work alongside The Grapes of Wrath or Gone With The Wind.
Unfortunately, the attempt fails, and the result is doubly disappointing because the elements are all there, the literary talent was available, but the effort was inadequate. This bold project was simply never going to succeed in a mere 160 pages of generously-sized text.
Why is it so short? The strong sense I get is that Feinstein had started with the first sister's story but, by the time that had been written, Feinstein had lost interest, quickly knocked together Lucy's back story and a framing device, and ordered it to be published warts and all. It's as if Feinstein so deeply empathises with Halina's desperation to extract love and approval from brilliant but damaged men – first her womanising father Leopold, then her depressive lover Christopher, then her abusive husband Janos – that when Halina opts for the diazepam safety of Bob Hessel's domestic devotion ("Poor, nervous Bob"), Feinstein herself becomes demoralised, and Halina's narrative stalls.
Feinstein then turns to Lucy's story, but it comes out in choking little gobs of venomous spittle and is finished in just 19 pages, giving no scope whatsoever for Lucy's development as a character. Feinstein even forgets to give Lucy an American voice (just two example: Americans call it "gas", not "petrol", and if they're angry they're "pissed", not "pissed off").
With Lucy's shallow narrative exhausted, Feinstein gives Halina the microphone again so she rattle off the Leo back story . Not far to go; come on, keep writing. Return to the original frame: seven pages to cover the half-sisters going to the funeral. Yes, I see the end! Oh, wait: I still haven't explained the most important element of all . There: finished at last. Take it away from me.
Where was the proofreader? I found at least four obvious errors. But it should never even have got to proofing stage; where was Feinstein's editor? Where was the advice, "This is an awesome first draft, great ideas, big themes, but needs a lot more work"? A structural edit: "The framing device isn't credible, let's come up with a different approach." Maybe even: "Take a break. Go back to your greatest skill, poetry. Let this one rest for a few years. Then come back with vigour and fill it out." To be blunt, Mother's Girl is undercooked, and its great themes remain hard and indigestible.
For example, why do women stay in, return to, or even seek out abusive relationships? This is such a complex question, and Halina offers the perfect opportunity to explore it. How did Halina's childhood – her charismatic father, her missing mother, her orthodox but dull foster-parents – contribute to her problematic adult life? Why would a highly intelligent and fiercely independent woman prefer abusive men?
I felt the hatred in him [...]. But the truth is I found it seductive, even glamorous, the blackness in him [...]. I was enchanted by the blackness. And even when I began to feel implicated in his unhappiness I was prepared to hate myself and even life itself rather than give up the joy I took in that charm. I only longed to comfort him with my youth, my body and my warmth.
I don't remember when I first realised that none of these things was in the least relevant to him. Even that I was prepared to accept, I was so completely, so selfishly, ensnared by the magic of his presence that I could no longer imagine living without it. I was in bondage to that pleasure. I did not even want to rebel. I did not even desire freedom. [pp 79-80]
Wow, this is superb writing (although a copy editor might correct the punctuation, especially the missing commas), and goes to the heart of why at least some women are attracted to such men. Indeed, Halina later describes that marriage to Janos as "like feeding a vampire". So, what's it like to relinquish such excitement and danger, and escape to normality with Bob? Alas, Feinstein dodges the question by having Halina simply say to Lucy:
I don't want to talk about Bob. I lived with him happily for twelve years, and they were the happiest I ever spent with a man. He made me happy. I didn't expect happiness.
Twelve years of happiness. [pp 115-116; my emphasis, in case you missed the message]
OK, I get that Halina's life with Bob is a narrative desert that Feinstein needs to avoid. Nonetheless, I want Halina to reflect more deeply on what this mere happiness with Bob (not the "joy" she felt with Janos) has meant. Is her "companionable calm" the more rational and desirable state? If Halina is capable of such deep insights into her relationship with Janos, why does Feinstein not give her the opportunity to explore what it was in Halina's own personality that attracted her to these destructive men? Is Halina's attraction to powerful but flawed father-figures something innate, or a direct product of her early childhood and the (flawed) relationship of her parents, or a symptom of the deep harm the Holocaust inflicted on the survivors and their families?
Feinstein raises – but baulks at exploring – the issue of complicity, yet this is central to an understanding of the Hungarian Holocaust that Halina and Leo escape from. I knew a little about war hero Raoul Wallenberg (there's a park in my home city that commemorates him), but this review led me to read more. In April 1944, Joel Brand struck a "blood for goods" deal with Eichmann to save one million Jews, but the Allies rejected the offer and arrested Brand. Kastner was more successful: his deal with Eichmann resulted in over 1,600 Jews escaping by train to Switzerland in June 1944. History regards Brand as a hero, though he remained heartbroken even up to his death in 1964 over his failure to save those additional lives; Kastner, by contrast, was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1957 for having "sold his soul to the devil" (according to the judge in his libel case, even though this judgement was overturned on appeal).
So is it ok to collaborate with the enemy if the net outcome is (or could be) a positive one? It seems to depend on the degree of personal benefit. Kastner was hated not so much for the deal itself, but because his family and his village were favoured when it came to selecting the survivors. There seems little doubt where Feinstein sits on this. .
It's hard to feel sympathy for any of the characters Feinstein has created in Mother's Girl, as all those with significant roles are deeply flawed. (The one exception is Halina's son David, but he gets just two lines of dialogue and we learn almost nothing about him.) In fact, there's an essay waiting to be written on how Feinstein constructs every situation to depict men so horribly (typically as either abusers or inseminators) even as she creates female characters who have agency in their own misery. For example, Lucy hints that some of her own mother's "more than four or five" pregnancies were terminated because her dancing career was more important, and adds: "Her first husband, I think he tried to persuade her ... she didn't like him leaving, and she thought that was maybe why he went. Men like to pass on the old genes don't they." Really? Sounds to me like the poor bastard just wanted to settle down and raise a family, and got tired of waiting for narcissistic Joannie to stop prancing around.
I mentioned the urgent need for a structural edit, and this was for me the novella's greatest flaw. The frame story is a perfectly reasonable approach: Leo's funeral serves to bring Halina and Lucy together, and Lucy begs Halina to help her understand the father she has always hated, while Halina begs Lucy to tell her about the sister she knows so little about. And at the funeral itself, the two meet someone who might be able to tell them more, not just about Leo but about Halina's "lost" mother. That's all fine.
First problem: Lucy, we're told, is sleep-deprived after a long flight, yet somehow she's able to stay awake (but silent) while Halina reminisces about her failed romances for at least 10 hours (4pm until dawn the next morning). Then Lucy has a long, mostly uninterrupted rant. And as the sun rises, her voice failing, Halina starts up again. Does Lucy finally begin to see a more complex Leo emerge? No.
Second problem: when Halina starts her tale, the narrative switches to the first person. While this works well for nine pages, Feinstein can't keep up the ongoing conceit (i.e. that Halina is saying all this to Lucy) and lapses into narrating directly to the reader. Now, if I'm writing a first-person narrative for the reader, I can be as detailed as I like: the colour of the sky, the things on the table, the actual words people say. But if the narrative represents what I'm saying aloud to someone else, such detail is no longer credible. It's simply absurd that Halina would say the following to Lucy:
'My friends,' began my father.
'Do not have the same family interests to protect,' said my mother crisply.
And I stared at her with a certain surprise. [p. 21]
If you're going to tell the story directly to the reader, you need to add a transition marker of some sort. In film, the image can wobble and dissolve into a new view, which the audience understands as entering into the person's memory (often with a voice-over narrative to explain time, place etc). In the written story, there are similar tricks. It's important, because the device takes us from Halina sitting in her chair at home talking to Lucy, to Halina sitting within her memory talking to us.
This omission is nowhere more obvious than when Halina gives us, word for word, seven pages of Leo's oral testimony to her. Here we should be entering Leo's memory rather than relying on Halina to remember his exact words. It's simply poor writing, and easily corrected by an editor. Again I ask: where were they?
My rating: I need to do a reboot of my algorithms, but this novella currently ranks 3,080 in my list of the world's greatest fiction, with a score of 69%. That's enough to just scrape 4 stars. With greater effort by both publisher and writer, it could have been so much higher, which is why I felt compelled to write this review.
Like all her characters, this novella is initially compelling but ultimately disappointing. What a shame.
Displaying 1 of 1 review