The Mothers

This is like one of those artsy indie films that has beauty and sincerity, but feels like a letdown because the action is so muted. This is the story of three lives intertwined and ghosted by tragedy and disappointments, with an uneasy conclusion. Nadia Turner is a senior in high school. Her mother has killed herself without any clear motive (that never does get revealed) and in seeking to fend off her grief, gets involved with Luke Sheppard, the pastor's son. He is a former football hotshot whose career ended due to a crippling injury. He now waits tables at a seafood joint. When Nadia becomes pregnant, she opts for an abortion so she can move on to University of Michigan in the Fall. Luke doesn't argue, but harbors sadness and show more resentment and although he (his parents) pay for the abortion, he casts Nadia off. That summer, she befriends Aubrey Evans, a chaste Christian girl who is hiding sexual abuse in her past and has come to CA to live with her sister, leaving behind her mother and her abuser. This all happens in the shadow of the Upper Room church in Oceanside CA, which presents a lifeline for some (Nadia's father Robert, Aubrey) and a condemnation for others (Nadia and Luke). Nadia goes on to MI and furthers her life, aiming for law school and staying away from Oceanside, though she keeps in touch with Aubrey. Luke further injures his leg after trying to return to football and Aubrey nurses him through his recovery. They fall in love and get married. Aubrey knows nothing about the abortion, though learns just before the wedding that Luke and Nadia were involved. This sows some seeds of doubt and distrust that don't have much consequence until Nadia returns home again to care for her father after an accident and hospitalization. With everyone in close proximity again, things blow up, and ultimately get resolved in an indie artsy way (meaning vague). The Mothers refers to the church ladies who occasionally parcel out the story to us and function like a Greek chorus with foreboding and judgment. They have seen everything, have even been in similar situations in their lives and have lived to tell the cautionary tale, if anyone would listen. The writing is quite good and the parallelism between the lives and relationships that survive vs. those that don't is striking. This book tackles some Big Issues in a way that is not heavy-handed, but leaves the questions open for discussion and contemplation. show less

This engaging story centers around a nearly hidden African American church in California called Upper Room where there are few secrets in the community because of the closeness of the mothers in the congregation who spread stories like wildfire, whether they are true or not.

Bennett convincingly describes how two teens, Nadia and Aubrey, who could not be more different, become best friends because they have one thing in common: Neither Nadia nor Aubrey have a mother. The two girls with their damaged interiors become entangled in interesting and sometimes predictable ways with the pastor's son, Luke, a formal football hero who wears his damage externally. The girls' relationships with each other and with Luke and his parents, the pastor show more and First Lady, are the catalysts for the girls' metamorphoses. Nadia has a scholarship to Michigan and cares little for her hometown or anyone, enjoying bar hopping with a fake ID, and going through boyfriends like glasses of water. Aubrey attends every service at Upper Room, shows no interest in leaving town, and wears a purity ring to demonstrate her chastity. Luke, and to some extent his parents' actions, change Nadia and Aubrey as much as Nadia and Aubrey change each other.

The themes of abandonment and hanging onto secrets and how those two things shape your life and choices are beautifully handled by Bennett. Nadia and Aubrey handle them in opposite ways.

Both girls as they become women experience betrayal. Bennett deals with betrayal as a gray area unlike in a soap opera or a beach paperback. Neither Nadia nor Aubrey cut the perpetrator out of their lives. Instead, the reader is filled with emotion for the women and even sympathy for the person who betrayed them as they struggle to find peace with their choices.

In a beautiful passage that ties all the mothers in the book together, Bennett sums up Nadia and Aubrey's grief at being motherless: "The weight of what has been lost is always heavier than what remains."

This is a beautiful book. It was close to a five star book for me, but there were a few places where the relationships Luke had were predictable. The ending was not predictable taking the novel completely out of the realm of beach paperbacks. I look forward to reading more of Bennett's work. show less

I devoured this novel about friendships and parental relationships and secrets. Nadia is a 17 year old when her mother commits suicide. She is a beautiful, smart young woman, about to go off to a good college, unlike many of the young people in her small town. But her pain causes her to seek out a secret relationship with a young man, Luke, suffering himself from a gruesome football injury. After their relationship falls apart, she becomes friends with another young woman, Aubrey, who has her own painful and abusive past. Though they all move on from this set up, those years follow the three as they make their way into adulthood. When Nadia returns to the town to care for her father (and at the same time starts to become closer to him), show more all the secrets kept in their youth will come to a head.

All of this is set within a church, the Upper Room, where the "mothers" of the church provide a sort of Greek chorus commentary on events. I found this a good idea, but not perfectly executed. In fact, that's how I felt about a lot of the book upon reflection. I LOVED reading this - flew through it, cared about the characters, wanted to know what would happen to them, and I'm still thinking about them after finishing. However, there are definitely some flaws. There are a few plot holes that I wish had been answered, and also a few transition points that weren't handled very well.

Even with my caveats, though, I will definitely read anything else that Brit Bennett writes - I've really enjoyed both of her books. show less

This book is a difficult one for me to review because there's a lot to discuss, but all of that would lead to spoilers that would reduce the next reader's enjoyment of this excellent debut novel. It's well-written, in an assured and subtle way that most authors don't achieve until the height of their writing careers and there's an issue at the heart of the novel that is rarely discussed with such nuance, since it's one that tends to polarize. People on both sides of the issue will feel uncomfortable with this book, and not because Bennett handles the issue in an uninformed way.

The Mothers are a group of long retired women, who gather together at church to work their way through prayer requests. They're nosy and gossipy, but they also show more care deeply for the congregants of The Upper Room church. They provide a Greek chorus to the story of Nadia, a young woman whose mother has died suddenly and who is negotiating her way through her last summer in Oceanside, California, before she leaves her almost-boyfriend, the pastor's son, and her best friend, who has also lost her mother (but for very different reasons) to go to university. What she does and doesn't tell her best friend will impact their lives for years after that summer.

The Mothers has been receiving a lot of attention and is on the long list for the Tournament of Books. It deserves the accolades it has received; they are not over-blown. show less

“The weight of what has been lost is always heavier than what remains.”

A beautiful book with a real soul at its center, The Mothers is unlike anything I've read before. It starts with a teenager recovering from the loss of her mother's suicide, who then does the desperate and ends her own baby's life through an abortion. The book is surprisingly layered as it touches upon the girl's life as she grows up, the father's life as he grows and mourns for his child and his youth, and the best friend who they ultimately kept in the dark for so long. Above this its about growth and not living up to potential. Its about acceptance but grief overshadowing everything forever. Its about moving on but staying behind.

I read so many dramas where show more cheap gimmicks are used for heartstring tugs, but this isn't it. This is realism and soul and heart. It doesn't shy away from giving the main character selfish traits that touch everything she touches. It doesn't shy away from the grim realities of her mourning father, or the underachievements of Lucas, who wished to be so much more. It doesn't save unrealistic purity for a pure-hearted friend. Really it's life, and life is unfair and unkind and doesn't discriminate.

That said, it's not just a depressing ride, but a human character study. There is a degree and form of happiness in the living of their lives. They must live with the past and how it haunts but that doesn't mean the same decision wouldn't have been made again.

Beautifully written and powerfully prosed, the story is unique again when it has older mothers and women of the church, the 'Upper Room' begin sections with musings and reflections. They are in a way biddy bodies who gossip and wonder, but they are also wise and kind and filled with wonder of life even though a lot of it has passed them by. The book isn't just about two teenagers kids and their choices - it's about adults and life and growth and self-reflection.

I didn't care much for the main character because her selfishness in a few situations was repulsive, but I liked the author painting a picture of a realistic person. People like that exist everywhere, so it's good to see their real stories. I liked how the author later acknowledges grief men feel if their children are killed through abortion too, and it wasn't just shied over and made to be only about women power, hear me roar kind of stuff. He wasn't made to be blameless in all certainly, but he was made realistic too and nothing would work out better than that.

Recommended for everyone because it makes you think, it makes you wonder, and it makes you feel - but genuinely feel, not cheesy and contrived dramas with predictable formulas that only recycle the tried and true that brings forth emotional mimicking instead of genuine emotional living.

I was touched by how the author creatively tied in the mother connection to the main character. Her mother may have ended it because she could never be happy with the joys she had, but the daughter was the same in so many ways. Both were wild spirits who were constantly fleeting from one thing to the next. The mother may not have been able to go to colleges of her dreams and travel, but it shows that it was not the things that 'held her back' that kept her from ever feeling whole.

An added touch of fun was I read this through a book box subscription. Literary Subscription box sent me this and two other books for review, as well as goodies inside. The author included tons of stickies explaining different names, places, and inspirations. It made it feel like I was reading the book while randomly calling up the author to chat with them about random things when I read them. show less

At age seventeen, Nadia Turner, still reeling from her mother's shocking suicide, has a secret relationship with Luke, the pastor's son. She gets pregnant. She has an abortion. And the two go on with their lives. But a connection remains between them, perhaps, and neither of them can entirely keep from thinking about what might have been.

This novel has gotten a lot of praise, and I think it's well-earned. The characters are well-drawn and believable, and situations that could easily have been melodramatic are instead handled with a light, deft touch. It also handles its touchy subject matter very well; there's no preachy authorial moralizing about abortion here, although the characters themselves are certainly allowed to have their own show more opinions. And I really like the writing. Bennett is capable of crafting a stunningly vivid and insightful turn of phrase when one is needed, and the rest of the time she just gives us beautifully clean prose that's smart enough to stay out of its own way. She also does some interesting things with POV that I wouldn't have expected to work anywhere near as smoothly as they do. show less

The Mothers are a group of older church women, a chorus of sorts. It is partially through their eyes that we see Nadia Turner, a high school student who recently lost her mom. When she starts dating Luke Sheppard, the pastor's son, it seems that she might settle down. But their relationship ends abruptly, Nadia leaves for the University of Michigan, and Luke marries her friend Aubrey. But the three friends are connected by secrets, which are gradually revealed in this well-written book.

This is a book that had me stopping every few pages to capture quotes. This is a strong story, but it was the writing that really won me over. Here's a few quotes:

"Black boys couldn't afford to be reckless, she had tried to tell him. Reckless white boys show more became politicians and bankers, reckless black boys became dead." p. 60

"A soft death can be swallowed with Called home to be with the Lord or We'll see her again in glory, but hard deaths get caught in the teeth like gristle." p.64

"Maybe she'd never really known her mother at all. And if you couldn't know the person whose body was your first home, then who could you ever know?" p.67

"Strangers often mistook them for sisters or cousins or even, Aubrey assumed, girlfriends. She was amazed by their ability to resemble each other, to become family, to occupy, at once, different ways to love each other." p.218 show less