The Mothers by Brit Bennett

I am normally one of the well-behaved members of my book club - I have virtually always read the book. I ran into a problem with this one. I was almost done it before I went on vacation, and intended to finish when I got back. I hadn't realized, however, that my electronic library book came due while I was gone, and when I got back and tried to finish off the last third, it had been returned, and all the library copies were taken (probably by other members of my book club.)  So I went to the meeting anyway and discussed without knowing how it ended up, although I was fine with it getting spoiled - you go to book club without being finished, that's what you get.

A week or two after the meeting, it finally was available again, so I snatched it up and sat down to read the last bit so I could finally write a review.

The Mothers is a book about two young women with absent mothers and their own tenuous connections to motherhood. It's also told through a Greek chorus of old women who go to the church that these young women go to.They are titularly called The Mothers, and act as a window to how the community regards the small dramas of these young people and their parents, gossiping and making assumptions, warranted and unwarranted, about them. I found them to be unreliable narrators, and thought that made the book more interesting, although at least one person in my book club thought that they were to be more trusted than I did. I thought they were a commentary on how communities understand the outside but not necessarily the why or how of what goes on around them. They aren't close to any of the main players, but they see themselves as experts nonetheless.

Nadia, one of the young women, lost her mother to suicide just a short while before the book starts. She doesn't know why her mother took her own life, or if it was her fault for even being born. Would her mother's life have been different if she'd had the opportunity to have an abortion instead of getting married? This is less than academic to Nadia, as when she gets knocked up, she definitely and quickly chooses her own future academic career instead of getting married to the pastor's son, Luke.

That doesn't mean she never thinks about it again, and Luke ruminates on the abortion even more. Nadia's best friend, Aubrey, who Nadia befriends after her abortion, eventually hears that there was one, but not the details. Aubrey has fled from a mother who didn't protect her from her stepfather, going to live with her sister and sister's girlfriend instead, finding the church as a haven of normalcy, where she can pretend life is simple and solvable.

The book follows these characters through many years, as Nadia leaves for school and returns home to take care of her father. Their relationships intertwine, and although they rarely talk about their shared history, it has an impact, for good and ill, on everything they do, and the further ways they hurt each other.

This is an interesting look at living in a tight-knit community, and what spaces still exist there. I can't say I loved it, but I did enjoy the book. It didn't, though, feel like it touched me on any level connected with the absence of my own mother, which I guess sort of feels like a strike against the story? I understood where the women in this book were coming from, but it didn't hit me where I've been dwelling in grief.  (Unlike reading Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie after the death of my father, which had me positively sobbing with shared pain.)

But being motherless stays with you. Now I know being an orphan stays with you, and isn't limited to those who were young when you they were orphaned. This story was very particular in a way that was not congruent with my experience. Nevertheless, it was worth a read. I like reading stories different from my own.