Book Review
Otherland: A Journey with My Daughter
by Maria Tumarkin
by Jo Case, editor of Readings Monthly newsletter, Apr 2010
Maria Tumarkin is one of those writers whose books take the reader on a journey. Often, that journey is intellectual – a journey of discovery. She says all her books are driven by passion, because she felt she had to write them. There’s a burning question to answer.
In Traumascapes, she wanted to know the effect of sites of mass human suffering trauma sites on those who live, work and travel there – and to investigate the ghoulish attraction places like Auschwitz still hols. In Courage, her question was What constitutes courage? What is the meaning of ‘hero’? In exploring her own life and the experiences of others, she looked for and uncovered the real, deep-seated meaning of these overused, often overhyped concepts.
Otherland is the story of a physical, emotional and intellectual journey: her travels back to her roots, in Russia and the Ukraine, with her teenage daughter Billie. Tumarkin wanted her daughter to know where she came from, before she was too old to care, or to want to travel with her mother. She found that this was impossible – that the country she left behind had irrevocably changed, and the place she grew up in no longer existed. She also realised that you can’t make someone (even, maybe especially, your daughter) feel and experience what you hope they will.
As this feisty, sparky, fiercely clever mother-daughter team discover post-Glastnost Russia – and each other – they form a new, deeper understanding of both. Tumarkin is a consummate storyteller, and her sharp observations about the new Russia are intricately woven with her portraits of her family and their relationships.
A brilliant, absorbing book about mothers, daughters, place and belonging.
