Deborah Orr: Motherwell review - memoir, but so much more
A complex study of a family, childhood, and a town transformed
Published in the year following Orr’s death at the age of 57, Motherwell is an analysis of the author’s childhood in Motherwell, on the outskirts of Glasgow, and her first steps into adulthood. However, while this book is ostensibly about Deborah Orr the child, it is as much about her parents, John and Win, and about Deborah Orr the adult. Everything seeps into everything else, just as Win seeped into Orr’s life, claiming her daughter’s whole being as her own.