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A review by anyaemilie
Mother Daughter Widow Wife by Robin Wasserman
4.0
Thank you to Scribner for the ARC
This book follows three (or four? maybe five depending on how you look at it) women in various stages of life.
Wendy has lost her memory. She is found on a bus with no memory of how she got there or who she was before. Lizzie is a graduate student assigned to Wendy's case at the Meadowlark, a facility that studies the human memory. Alice is Wendy's daughter who wants to find out why her mother left. And then there is Elizabeth, who is the titular widow.
All of the women are connected in some way to Benjamin Strauss, the director of the Meadowlark.
I didn't particularly care for any of the characters in this book. None of them are especially good people. All of them have hurt other people, and most of them are selfish.
As far as plot, there isn't much. Most of it is very internal, with all the women dealing with the ramifications of their decisions and how they've affected other people. I think that it does that well, though. It's a good examination of characters with the memory studies being more of a backdrop than anything.
What I didn't really like though was that without the one "important" man in the book, there isn't really much of a story. So much of these women's identities hinges on Benjamin Strauss. Lizzie, arguably the main character, basically has no identity outside of her relationship to Strauss, which wasn't particularly interesting to me. Even the title hinges on these women's relationships to him. But maybe that was the point. I'm not really sure.
I would probably give this a 3.5. It wasn't a terrible book, but not one of my favorites either. And it did take me awhile to finish despite being just over 300 pages. Like I said before, less plot, more character examination.
This book follows three (or four? maybe five depending on how you look at it) women in various stages of life.
Wendy has lost her memory. She is found on a bus with no memory of how she got there or who she was before. Lizzie is a graduate student assigned to Wendy's case at the Meadowlark, a facility that studies the human memory. Alice is Wendy's daughter who wants to find out why her mother left. And then there is Elizabeth, who is the titular widow.
All of the women are connected in some way to Benjamin Strauss, the director of the Meadowlark.
I didn't particularly care for any of the characters in this book. None of them are especially good people. All of them have hurt other people, and most of them are selfish.
As far as plot, there isn't much. Most of it is very internal, with all the women dealing with the ramifications of their decisions and how they've affected other people. I think that it does that well, though. It's a good examination of characters with the memory studies being more of a backdrop than anything.
What I didn't really like though was that without the one "important" man in the book, there isn't really much of a story. So much of these women's identities hinges on Benjamin Strauss. Lizzie, arguably the main character, basically has no identity outside of her relationship to Strauss, which wasn't particularly interesting to me. Even the title hinges on these women's relationships to him. But maybe that was the point. I'm not really sure.
I would probably give this a 3.5. It wasn't a terrible book, but not one of my favorites either. And it did take me awhile to finish despite being just over 300 pages. Like I said before, less plot, more character examination.