How to Manage Your Mother : Understanding the Most Difficult, Complicated, and Fascinating Relationship in Your Life

"How To Manage Your Mother" contains over 100 extensive interviews with characters as diverse as a circus lion tamer, a New York cab driver, a transvestite model and well-known figures from politics and the entertainment industry, including Michael Palin, John Cleese, General Colin Powell, Tom Selleck and Michael Winner. They all talk movingly and honestly about their relationship with their mother, from that first memory in the pram through to establishing an adult relationship and to dealing with terminal illness or death. This book is one of the first to confront adults' relationships with their mothers, and does so by drawing on the memories and emotions of the interviewees to analyse the archetypal secret lives of mothers. By enabling the readers to understand their mother, and come to terms with her, this book enables them to come to terms with themselves. Chapters stretch from babyhood ('First memories: mother as goddess') to adolescence ('The red dress: seeing the world through our mother's eyes') and to full adulthood ('Expectations' and 'Mother love'). Written throughout in non-technical language and concluding with a practical chapter on the ten proven ways to improve your relationship with your mother, "How to manage your mother" is a book that will revolutionise the way you think about your mother.