Her Mother's Daughter: A Memoir

by Nadia Wheatley

"Why didn't you and Daddy want people to give you any wedding presents?" I used to ask. But my mother could never be drawn into talking about the wedding. Later, I assumed it was because she did not wish to be reminded of the ghastly mistake she had made in marrying my father.

Born in Australia in 1949, author Nadia Wheatley grew up with a sense of the mystery of her parents’ marriage. Caught in the crossfire between an independent woman and a controlling man, the child became a player in the deadly game. Was she her mother’s daughter, or her father’s creature?

After her mother’s death, the ten-year-old began writing down the stories her mother had told her—of a Cinderella-like childhood, followed by an escape into a career as an army nurse in Palestine and Greece, and as an aid-worker in the refugee camps of post-war Germany. Some fifty years later, the finished memoir is not only a loving tribute but an investigation of the bewildering processes of memory itself.

Nadia Wheatley is an Australian writer whose publications range from biography and history to fiction and picture books. Her biography The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift was the Age Book of the Year, Non-fiction, and is the only biography to have won the Australian History Prize, NSW Premier's History Awards.

‘One of the greatest Australian biographies…a work which never confuses itself with fiction but which has the same readability and flair and command of tempo. It’s a hell of a story.’ Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald on The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift.

‘Outstanding...a rare feat in Australian literary biography.’ Weekend Australian on The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift

‘An important addition to the history of Australian social life and a vivid insight into how individual people can be controlled by repressive social attitudes. Wheatley reminds us of the difference between how family life is supposed to be and how it is actually experienced.’ Inside Story

‘In a moving and beautifully written memoir, Wheatley brings to life her mother’s adventures…My bet is that this fascinating book will prove to be an award-winner. Highly recommended.’ Courier-Mail

Genres: Biography Memoir

327 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 2, 2018

About the author

Nadia Wheatley is an Australian author.

Reviews

[Text Publishing]

‘[Her] Mother’s Daughter is one of the most devastatin­g examples of gaslighting that I have ever read. It is not only a beautiful rendering of an “ordinary” life, it is also a significant social history of wartime Europe and post-war Australia.’
Australian

‘In a moving and beautifully written memoir, Wheatley brings to life her mother’s adventures…My bet is that this fascinating book will prove to be an award-winner. Highly recommended.’
Courier-Mail

‘An important addition to the history of Australian social life and a vivid insight into how individual people can be controlled by repressive social attitudes. Wheatley reminds us of the difference between how family life is supposed to be and how it is actually experienced.’
Inside Story

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admire Nadia Wheatley as a biographer through her excellent biography of Charmian Clift The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift and I was interested to see how a professional biographer/historian deals with the problem of writing a hybrid biography/memoir. ...There is a narrative distance between Wheatley the author and Wheatley the character, and I think it is this detachment and – is ‘professionalism’ the word?- that makes this book a work of biographical reconstruction as much as memoir. Most of it is written in the third person, but occasionally Nadia Wheatley the adult biographer breaks into the narrative, commenting on information that she has uncovered, responding with scepticism, regret or shame. Wheatley has brought her biographer’s eye to her own family, contextualizing it within the mores and expectations of the time...

Although the structure of the book is mainly chronological, it skips back and forth, shifting between third and first person. It is a deft book, written with confidence. Its emotional tone is dispassionate, and you, as a reader, do the emotional work of being enraged at people’s self-centredness, fearful of what seems inevitable, and hollowed by grief and unfairness. That Wheatley has brought you to this place is a testament to her skill as a writer.

For my complete review, please visit
https://residentjudge.com/2019/10/08/...

[Rozanna Lilley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very powerful memoir. Its full force is revealed in the account of the author's childhood, particularly her relationship with her mercurial and controlling father. An immensely imaginative little girl, Wheatley has to contend not only with her father but also with her beloved mother's growing misery, instability and ill health. The book highlights a world in which women were easily declared mad by their husbands and doctors protected one another. The landscape of Wheatley's childhood moves across different pockets of suburban Sydney - some lush and fairytale like, others blank and threatening, with wild dogs stalking the perimeter - mirroring the sad changes in this little girl's interior world. As she describes the obsessive rituals she developed to ward off the encroaching dark, I felt the sharp sting of recognition and grief for everything she lost and strived to recover. The conclusion of the book has a restrained account of sexual abuse in the heart of a suburban home that left me reeling. As I was reading I would find myself thinking and worrying about this child. A very brave book.

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read and admired Nadia Wheatley's biography of Charmian Clift some years ago, so when I heard her discussing that book and this one in a radio programme, I went looking for this memoir of her mother.

What I have just finished reading is a loving reconstruction of the life of Wheatley's mother, who died when Wheatley was only eight years old. The book is much more than just a study of her mother Neen: it is about the attitudes towards women in Australia before and after the Second World War, about her mother's war service and post war work with displaced persons in Germany. And then it is about her father, his sadistic treatment of his wife and daughter, and the grim reality of Wheatley's life after her mother died.

This is not a "misery memoir", but a fine work of research, as well as a loving tribute, and a story of survival against the odds.

[Maya Michel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story should be made into a movie. The main character, Neen, strong, resilient, gritty and very lively - her girls, the other nurses who were her posse throughout pre-war and WWII - how she skyrocketed in her positions of power throughout Europe so humbly and determinedly - her late in life marriage, her beloved daughter and her eventual disappearance from her own life. Wow. This book has everything. Highs and lows, exuberance and deep, deep sadness.

Beautifully written, a daughter looks back and resurrects what she knows of her mother in tenderness.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book’s main focus is Nadia Wheatley's mother. Nina (Neen) Wheatley, nee Watkin, was born in northern New South Wales in 1906, and died in Sydney in 1958. She lost her own mother when she was five years old. She and her siblings were separated when her father remarried, with Nina and her younger sister Boo, staying with their father and his new wife. It became clear that the family expected Nina to be the parents’ carer in their old age. However, Nina managed to train as a nurse, and go overseas during the war as an enlisted nurse with the 6th AGH (Australian General Hospital), where she worked in Greece and Palestine. She returned to Europe after the war to work with UNRRA and then IRO, caring for Displaced Persons. It was during this time that she met the man – English doctor, John Wheatley – she ended up marrying. It was a bad decision: he was a womaniser, possessive and controlling, and, according to Wheatley, sadistic. Indeed, it’s very likely that, had he – and the medical fraternity more broadly – taken women’s health seriously, Nina would not have died when she did. After her mother’s death when Wheatley was 9 years old, she, an only child, lived with a local family known to her (and chosen by her mother before her death.) This was, for Wheatley, a problematic situation – but this part of the story occupies just the last 20 or so pages of the book, but, while it’s important to the overall memoir, I do want to move onto other points. For these points and the rest of my review, please check my blog: https://whisperinggums.com/2018/10/21...

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ebook. Possibly the saddest book I have ever read. Beautifully depicts a time when children were to be seen but not heard and not to be given any respect for their intelligence or ability to feel emotions. Just imagine having your adored mother disappear and to be suddenly placed in a new family and have no idea that your mother is dead. Just imagine being sexually abused by your foster father but believing that this is safer than being with your cruel and sadistic father. The achievement with the book is to examine the truth of the writer’s mother’s history and to prove that she is indeed her glorious mother’s daughter and not “just like her father” as she was told often when she misbehaved as a child. The book is a loving tribute to the mother Neen, superbly written by her daughter who has clear recollections as well as enormous amounts of research to support them.

[Emily Rose]

Listened to Nadia Wheatley's episode on ABC's Conversations, which sparked my interest in her books.

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good read.