Holy Narccsism Batman!!! This woman was psycho!! And the scary part is, even thought this is a fictional character, I know someone very much like her. Very well researched book from a psychological standpoint and very well written. Told from the perspective of two children in the family, one a boy and one a girl, you can see the level of mental destcruction this causes on people and how it could effect them for the rest of their lives. The father in the story is on the peripheral but you can also see how someone can become so used to this type of behavior after so many years that they don't even realize what's being done to them or to those around them. This book is sometimes a little disturbing but very hard to put down. ( )

I really didn't want to like this book, but it kept building in suspense and terror until I was hooked.

A psychological drama that will leave you mesmerized, although I felt deflated by the last chapter (hence, the four not five stars).
( )

I won this book through Goodreads First Reads.

To be hones this really wasn't my kind of book. I can see some people enjoying it but it just wasn't for me.

The whole mystery was not very mysterious and there were no unexpected plot twists. I knew what would happen long before it did, which resulted in less enjoyment and less attachment to the characters. Also, some of the scenarios seemed a bit unrealistic to me. They just weren’t things I could see happening or that you'd expect from the characters.

Speaking of characters, they were all a bit duller than expected. The synopsis makes them out to be all very interesting but in reality I found every one of them to be too flat for such a character driven story.

It wasn't all bad though. There were a few interesting parts and I very much enjoyed all of Will's long words, which are scattered throughout his parts. They add to his character and were very interesting. In fact, the best and most memorable thing I got out of this book was the word eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious. It means good. ( )

When I first picked this book up, I wasn't sure I was going to finish it. In one explosive night, a family ends up with one kids in a nuthouse and another in the hospital to repair the damage the sister did. Or is that what happened? I thought I wouldn't finish it, because I really didn't like Josephine, the mother of the family. She was just vile. And then I realized that was the point. I think this portrayed narcissism expertly. While they aren't all this dangerous, they are so hard to deal with. Good read. ( )

Koren Zailckas doesn’t waste any time. In her first novel Mother, Mother: A Novel she takes no more than one hundred pages to pull the mask off Josephine Hurst, a woman who believes she is the pinnacle of modern motherhood—raising two lovely daughters (one destined for Broadway) and a son so gifted she has to home school him. Whether this is true or not seems beside the point to Josephine—it is what she believes. Unfortunately for her, Zailckas’ brilliantly schizophrenic prose shows otherwise and by page 120 I had developed a nervous tic from Josephine’s soft smiles followed by psychological torment the North Koreans would admire. She is a jackhammer against the concrete of her children’s sanity.

The intensity vibrates from Zailckas’ writing. Josephine has ensconced herself so firmly in the role of matriarch that getting to the bottom of her twisted psyche is a task beyond her husband, who secretly attends AA meetings because his life is such hell but, rather than expose that weakness, lets everyone think he’s having an affair. The oldest daughter, Rose has run off to NYC with her mysterious boyfriend in an attempt to have a life of her own and Violet, the second daughter is in a mental institution after ingesting some all-natural herbs that were supposed to provide the high of LSD without the side effects. While high there is a huge family fight and the youngest, twelve-year-old Will, gets his hand slashed. Due to his epilepsy, Violet’s altered state, and their father’s blackout (relapse into drinking), Josephine provides the only script for what transpired and it plays Violet as a psychopath who hates her brother. In order to protect him, Josephine has to check Violet into a psych ward.

One would expect, with Josephine’s delusions of grandeur, that she tells her own story, but instead Mother Mother is divided by chapter into two viewpoints: Violet and Will. Zailckas seems to know that letting us into Josephine’s head would end in a psychotic break for the most levelheaded reader so she leaves it to the rebellious (but ultimately very sane) Violet and the ‘laden with disabling diagnoses but brilliant’ Will, to render the story as best they can. She enhances the disparity between the two children by writing in short chapters that bounce between the Hurst household, where Josephine dotes on her loving son, the only one of her children not to betray her, and the hospital where Violet is trying to find reality and get someone to listen to her.

The rest of this review is at: http://gilmoreguidetobooks.com/2013/09/mother-mother/ ( )