Koren Zailckas

Before you begin this book, make sure you have lots of free time because you will not be able to put it down! Did you like Gone Girl? I thought this was even more of a cliffhanger. When it ended, I kind of hoped that there would be a sequel to follow.
In order of age, there are three children: Rose, Viola and William. Rose has disappeared, run away from home, Viola (Violet) is rebelling, she is on a weird starvation diet, and William is being home-schooled as a result of bullying. He has show more recently been diagnosed as both epileptic and autistic. Douglas, the father, is an alcoholic. Josephine is the mother, and you will soon get a picture of a family with dysfunction, a family in which Josephine appears to be the only one who is put together with all the right parts in the right place. But you will keep wondering, is she?
Violet, Will and Doug, all have some kind of blackout episodes: Will from stress, Doug from drink and Violet from drugs. Whenever a traumatic incident occurs, Josephine takes charge, assumes the position of authority, makes the decisions, and relates the details to everyone. She creates the narrative everyone believes. She seems to be the only one who has a clear-head and a complete awareness of events.
Nothing, however, is what it appears to be. Trompe l’oeil, sleight of hand and misdirection appear in every chapter. Each chapter is labeled either William Hurst or Violet Hurst, and the tale evolves through their eyes, through their interpretation of events with sudden insights and/or mistakes of judgment. It is their conclusions that ultimately define the events that occur.
Violet has a really good friend named Imogen. Her mother, Beryl, is suffering from Cancer. Beryl and Josephine represent two sides of a coin, two types of sickness, the head and the tail, the good and the evil; in a way, both are extreme representations of the dominant quality of their own personalities. One is perhaps, a little overly empathetic, kind and interested in others, while the other is, perhaps, a narcissist, only interested in herself and the attention she can attract.
The author’s writing style relates these events in such an easy-going manner that everything that happens seems plausible, albeit from different and opposing vantage points. There is no evidence to disprove anything any character believes, so conclusions, right and wrong, are drawn with whatever evidence is provided.
Who is the favorite child? Is it William, Rose or Violet, is it a double entendre? Is it the child that once was Josephine or Doug? Who can tell? Read on and try and find out. It is a story about relationships, emotional and mental illness, learning disabilities, overreactions, parenting styles, healthy and unhealthy environments and the growing pains of children as they mature. All of these subjects and more, are a bit hidden in the pages, but they are subtly explored within the diabolical, Alfred Hitchcock type plot; you can almost hear the theme song. The story is addictive, written in an almost matter-of-fact, conversational tone, so that once you begin, you will be drawn into the conversation, and you won’t want to stop reading until you find out who is the villain, who is the cruel and sadistic, cold and calculating liar, the puppeteer orchestrating all episodes.
Enough said, or I will give something away. You must read this book for yourself to discover the truth or, perhaps, what appears to be the truth! The minds of the characters are explored so thoroughly that you may want to jump into the book and throttle one of them, shake some sense into them, change the course of action, but you can’t! The tale will march on to its own conclusion with you as its captive. show less

Josephine Hurst has done a stellar job holding up the facade of her perfectly successful family until her oldest daughter, Rose, runs away with an elusive boyfriend. Soon, her daughter Violet has joined her hippie friends in taking hallucinogenic drug trips and exploring Eastern religions. Convinced her husband is involved in a torrid affair, Josephine turns to her young son William as her pillar of strength, keeping him under strict control in a last ditch effort to save her family.

As the show more Hurst family secrets are slowly revealed in Violet and William's alternating chapters, it becomes clear that the reliability of Mother, Mother's narrators and their caretakers stand on shaky ground. Following a violent incident in the home, Violet is hospitalized under psychological care, unsure if she committed the crime her family is accusing her of. Will, recently moved to homeschool for his own safety, feels crushed under the pressure of pleasing his mother without alienating everyone around him.

In a carefully layered, dark tale of psychological control, Koren Zailckas twists her American family to the breaking point. A perfectly creepy book for snuggling up through Fall, Mother, Mother becomes compulsively readable as the Hurst's secrets and lies collide in its bold conclusion.

Blog: www.rivercityreading.com show less

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 show more 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/ show less

Reading this is like watching a disaster unfold before your eyes. You helplessly watch, unable to turn away. Part domestic drama, part psychological horror, part mystery, part thriller, it's a portrait of a sublimely dysfunctional family. Dad's an alcoholic coward. Mom's a sociopath. The three children are all severely damaged.

Two of the children narrate the story in alternating chapters. Their home lives are genuinely broken in ways the reader recognizes and understands, and they mostly do show more not, which makes reading the details chilling. The plot revolves around the missing older sister.

This story goes to some very dark places, and is really disturbing and fairly compelling. Despite a slow start and being a little too long, the book was enjoyable. All characters were well drawn and, as extreme as they were, they were believable. The mother is a character you will never forget! show less