Alice Fitzgerald’s Her Mother’s Daughter is told through the eyes of these two characters, the narration shifting cleverly in perfect tones as the overarching story is told. Touching on family dynamics, trauma, the mother-daughter relationship and change, it’s a thematically intense novel that has many light moments.

I caught up with Alice to find out more.

This is your first novel; how long has the story been in your head for?

The story has been in my head for as long as I can remember, in some shape or form. I am London-born to Irish parents, and I’ve always been intrigued by ideas of home and belonging, which come through in the novel. In the end, the whole story is built around one summer holiday to Ireland because I remember those summers so well. None of mine ended like Clare and Josephine’s though!

Is any of the story from your own background?

Yes. I’m London-born to Irish parents, and my parents’ marriage also came to an end, as Josephine and Michaels’ does. My mum isn’t Josephine though, she is a character inspired by many women who I know and don’t know, who have been victims of abuse and are tormented by their past and their struggle with mental health. She is so many women, I think, struggling with motherhood and what that is, the pressures of society on women and what we should be, what we should look like…

You speak a bit about dieting in the book and about the importance of being a ‘good’ girl – do you think that the pressure to conform to certain is one of the social forms of oppression that exists? It almost echoes the mother’s personal abuse.

Absolutely. There are messages about being a ‘good’ girl, a ‘beautiful’ girl, a ‘perfect’ girl, a ‘slim/skinny’ girl, everywhere. They all merge and fuse and get mixed up and I don’t even know the difference between them. I wanted to capture what it is to be female, and a victim, and how we often are victims, to more or less extent, at some point in our lives.

What interests you about the mother-daughter relationship?

Everything! That we soak up so much from our mothers, how they shape us, how their traumas, or hang-ups, or attitudes, are passed on to us, and in turn how we pass them on to our own daughters. A mother is a child’s first home, and she remains that in some way for the rest of a child’s life.

Running until May 21st 2016

It’s the first time Charlotte Keatley’s play has been performed in London in 25 years, but this production of My Mother Said I Never Should, produced by Tiny Fires and running at St James Theatre, suggests that the capital has been waiting that long. It’s easy  to see why the National Theatre ranked it as one of the most significant plays of the twentieth century in 2000, and despite it being the most performed play ever written by a female playwright, Paul Robinson’s direction and Tara Finley’s production keeps it fresh.

The family drama spans 1940 to 1987 and four generations of women, and explores not only the personal dynamics at play, but those of society and its effect work, marriage and motherhood.

The plot is simple – we have Doris, born in Oldham in 1900, her daughter, Margaret who inherits some of her work and duty values but is some more freedom, her daughter, Jackie, who has an unplanned pregnancy in 1969, and hands her baby daughter, Rosie, to her mother to bring up as her own. But as all mother and daughter relationships, the reality is all the more complex. The ways in which they mirror one another, even whilst trying to break away, are clear, and we see repeated a longing to be different coexisting with a desire to connect.

Of course things have changed and female freedoms extended and opportunities grown. There’s a sense of movement for the women – at one point Margaret says to Jackie ‘You’ve got to go further than me – otherwise, what’s it been worth?’ – but at the same time it’s very clear that much has stayed the same, particularly when it comes to the bonds and family dynamics. She herself made a similar assertion as young woman, declaring, ‘Well I’m going to be different! Women did so much during the war: there’s nothing stopping us now.’  Men are never physically present, but always casting a shadow, whether as husbands, fathers or bosses. However, rather than a play about women and men, this feels like more of a play about mothers and daughters.

Much of this is down to the convincing familial dynamics between the cast. Doris Lipman is superb as Maureen, showing grit, humour and strength of character even as she is constrained by conventions. Katie Brayben, Olivier Award winner last year for her performance as Carole King in Beautiful, plays Jackie, and manages to portray a wild child of the sixties to a mother parted from her daughter and the complexities of changing emotions and relationships. Serena Manteghi is vibrant and animated as the youngest character, and it’s touching to see her grow.  Huge congratulations and respect also has to go to Hilary Jones, who stepped in at the last moment to play Margaret due to Caroline Faber having to step down – this performance was the first configuration of the cast, and only the second time they had met.

Signe Beckman’s set design is sparse, with flickering television screens setting up the context of the time without overpowering the individual stories. Interspersed with movement through the decades are flashbacks, such as from Doris to 1923 when Jack proposed, and waste ground scenes where all four become children again, playing together and casting spells. There’s simple repeated motifs, such as the movement from ‘mummy’ to ‘mum’ to ‘mother’ to a first name, and the solitaire board that becomes a metaphor for winning at life by being an individual.

There’s no formula. The relationships between mother and daughter are delicate. Margaret says at one point that ‘You do what’s best for your daughter, and you find out it’s not what she wanted, or needed’ – a thought millions of mothers have had. But still the bond is there. The scene where the family sort Doris’ late husband’s house provides a particularly lovely lens through which to explore the relationships of the four women together.

Whilst watching My Mother Said I Never Should, I wished that my own mummy was there. I wanted to share the moments with her. This feels like high praise.