The Mothers
the New York Times bestseller
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- £0.99
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half.
The Mothers is a dazzling debut about young love, a big secret in a small community and the moments that haunt us most.
All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season.
It's the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance - and the subsequent cover-up - will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully manoeuvre and dogged by the constant, nagging question: what if they had chosen differently?
In entrancing, lyrical prose, THE MOTHERS asks whether a 'what if' can be more powerful than an experience itself.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
From the author: “A lot of this book came from the anxiety of being a young woman and the fear of becoming a mother before you’re ready. I was thinking about a girl who loses her mother very suddenly and tragically, and who then finds herself in the position where she may become somebody else’s mother. And she has to make a choice. I loved the idea of there being this chorus of church women who are telling the story, whose voices cycle through judgment and empathy. It was a voice I kept hearing as I was working on the book and eventually I thought, ‘Well, what if these are just characters who are actually in the book and they are the ones who are telling the story?’ I find the relationship with mothers really fascinating. It’s so formative and important—whether it nurtures or harms you. Either way, it shapes you as you become an adult.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bennett's brilliant, tumultuous debut novel is about a trio of young people coming of age under the shadow of harsh circumstances in a black community in Southern California. Deftly juggling multiple issues, Bennett addresses the subjects abortion, infidelity, religious faith, and hypocrisy, race head-on. At 17, Nadia Turner's life is topsy-turvy. Six months after learning of her mother's suicide, Nadia winds up pregnant and decides to abort the baby. The unborn baby's father, Luke a preacher's son gives Nadia the money to terminate but falls back on his promise to pick her up at the clinic after her appointment, causing a fissure in their relationship. Nadia's secret decision haunts her for decades through college in Michigan, law school, and an extended trip back home to care for her ailing father. Meanwhile, the slow-to-build trust between Luke and Aubrey, Nadia's bible-thumping childhood best friend, who knows nothing of Nadia's past, is threatened when Nadia and Luke reunite and rip open old wounds after Luke and Aubrey's wedding. There's much blame to go around, and Bennett distributes it equally. But she also shows an extraordinary compassion for her flawed characters. A Greek chorus of narrating gossipy "Mothers" (as they're referred to in the text) from the local Upper Room Chapel provides further context and an extra layer to an already exquisitely developed story.
Customer Reviews
Entrancing
Yet another in put downable read from this author
A disappointing angle
It seems a very anti abortion book towards the end sadly.
Incredible read
Put a weekend aside to read this book. Although I’m a British white 64 year old Grandma, In my head I now sound like a mother.