A Country You Can Leave chronicles Lara’s journey of self-discovery and her relationship with her mother, Yevgenia. At the beginning of the story, Lara is growing tired of her mother's strict rules and what she sees as her mother’s limited worldview. She starts to question her mother’s authority and she starts to ask more about her mother’s past.
She wants to explore more about her identity and immerse herself in the culture of the United States, not the culture of Russia. Along the way, Lara learns more about her mother’s past. Fundamentally, A Country You Can Leave is a novel about history. It is a novel about the way that a person’s history–and their history of trauma, family history, and genealogical history–can affect their entire life. A person’s history follows them for the rest of their life and shapes the way they interact with the world, other people, and society more generally.
One day, Lara and her mother experience a brutal attack, which forces them to confront their respective pasts and their familial history of violence. Because of this experience, they both realize that they need to stop focusing on the past and move forward together as a team. They need to be one. They begin to open up to each other and share their feelings and experiences, which something new in their relationship.
As the story progresses, Lara begins to fully deal with her identity as a biracial person in the United States and starts to celebrate who she truly is. Her newfound confidence allows her to chart her own path in life and become a better, more empowered person capable of doing anything she sets her mind to. It also allows her to mend her relationship with her mother, which the book argues is incredibly important. Lara is able to look at her mother from a new, empathetic perspective and begins to understand where her mother is coming from.
Ultimately, Lara and her mother mend their relationship and create a newfound understanding with each other. They know where each other is coming from and understand the importance of having a good relationship with each other. And now, their relationship is stronger than ever. Both women learn to embrace what may come in the future and start to trust people, even though both things are uncertain.
The novel explores themes of identity, trauma, family history, the importance of family, cultural assimilation, and the power of having a dialogue with someone so that people could heal relationships. It shows how confronting past traumas and opening up to people that you love can lead to growth and healing–both things which people need to succeed in life.
