Motherwell: A Girlhood by Deborah Orr - New Hardback Memoir - Family, Class & Girlhood in 1970s Scotland - Guardian Journalist's Acclaimed Life Story

Condition: New Format: Hardback ISBN: 9781474611459 Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (W&N) Age Range: Adult Overview: Motherwell: A Girlhood is Deborah Orr's posthumously published memoir, a searing and tender account of growing up in a Lanarkshire steel town in the 1960s and 70s. Written by the celebrated Guardian journalist shortly before her death in 2019, it explores the fraught bond between Orr and her mother, Win, against a backdrop of industrial decline, class division and shifting gender roles. Brand new hardback, ideal for readers of literary memoir and social history. About the Book: Just shy of eighteen, Deborah Orr left the town of Motherwell to go to university, a decision her mother Win regarded as close to a betrayal. Motherwell: A Girlhood is built around that rupture, tracing how a bright, questioning daughter grew up inside a household ruled by her mother's rigid expectations and her father's quieter presence. Orr writes with the precision and wit that made her one of the most admired columnists of her generation, turning a specific, local childhood into something universal: a study of how women inherit and resist the roles assigned to them. The book moves between vivid domestic detail and a wider social history of Motherwell, a steel town already in decline as Orr grew up. Class, work, marriage and motherhood are interrogated through Win's own thwarted ambitions, projected onto her daughter. Orr never flinches from complexity: Win is drawn as controlling, yet also failed by the narrow choices of her generation. The result is a memoir as much about a mother as a girlhood. Completed shortly before Orr's death from cancer in 2019 and published in January 2020, it has been widely praised as a clear-eyed, beautifully written account of family, place and the long shadow of the past. Key Benefits: An acclaimed, posthumously published memoir from a major British journalist and columnist. Vivid social history of working-class Scotland in the 1960s and 70s,