Jack points out in the introduction that "it is fathers rather than mothers who until recently have hogged the limelight in family memoirs", perhaps, he speculates, because they might have been more famous, because their love was more conditional, their lives more dramatic. And they died earlier.
Edmund White's mother was quite a character. Ian McEwan's story didn't add up to much. Paul Theroux' mother wanted all his many siblings to have a restaurant meal while Theroux's father was taken off a ventilator to die. Theroux crept away to be the only one at his father's deathbed. Looking back, he realises that his mother had always been a dominating, scheming witch. Jim Lewis's piece has few worthwhile passage, and it's not even about mothers - it's about sleep. I liked Richard Beard's essay on mothers-in-law.
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