Just shy of 18, Deborah Orr left Motherwell - the town she both loved and hated - to go to university. Yet her severing from her family was only superficial. She continued to travel back to Motherwell, fantasizing about the day that her mother Win might come to accept her as good enough.

A sharp, candid and often humorous memoir about the long shadow that can be cast when the core relationship in your life compromises every effort you make to become an individual.