Songs My Mother Taught Me

Laila Abdalla is an associate professor of English at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, and former professor at McGill University.

This novel traces the painful stages of Isobel Cleary’s childhood and
adolescence. Stifled by her mother’s impossible expectations, Isobel
becomes increasingly reclusive. Her attitude toward her parents shifts
from acceptance and embarrassment to humiliation and despair, and her
isolation intensifies when her beloved grandfather sells his home,
Journey’s End, the site of the family’s summer vacations and the one
place where Isobel could escape from her mother’s selfish demands and
her father’s ineffectiveness.

With the sale of Journey’s End, Isobel’s childhood comes to an
abrupt conclusion. She embarks on a journey from innocence to
experience, from the insanity of her familial situation to the sanity of
her own definitions of adulthood. Ironically, she discovers her second
haven at a hospital for the mentally ill. It is here that she comes to
realize that not all insanity is enclosed within hospital walls. With
this understanding, she is finally given the opportunity to place her
family life in perspective and begin the journey from weakness to
strength.

Songs My Mother Taught Me is a thoughtful, sensitive, and subtle novel
about the process through which we come to understand that we are not
our parents, and begin the arduous task of discovering who we are going
to be.