Scan barcode
A review by marjoriehuang
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
3.5
This book is about a girl named nadia who loses her mother to suicide and begins to contemplate her own role as a mother when her boyfriend luke gets her pregnant and she gets an abortion.
there's also her pious best friend aubrey who she has a complex relationship with because she hides the abortion and also the boyfriend from her, but then the best friend and her childhood boyfriend get married. and then there is the whole her ex boyfriend cheating on aubrey with her thing.
throughout the book there are sections where these old church ladies will speak as a collective "we" about the events of the book. they are the eponymous mothers. I didn't really like the inclusion of their narrative voice, to be honest. I feel like it laid the themes on a bit too thick, and they were also really really annoying. these women are basically those people who act they have your best interests at heart but really will just gossip about you. they're super sexist, of course
I feel like this book had a lot of potential to become a really rich story about religious trauma (explored through aubrey) and guilt + grief (nadia) but instead it lost a lot of its initial shimmer to me after the first 100 pages. I really don't tend to like it when authors switch perspectives around a lot of make a bunch of years pass in a story without good reason: those narrative techniques to me usually indicate that the author is digging for things to write about because they don't have enough material to flesh out their novel with one time period/perspective alone. I also found luke's perspective distracting and not particularly compelling. he was also insanely annoying and I feel like Brit Bennett's message got muddled by her trying to be compassionate to him?? but she also made him so horrible.
This book is only getting 3.5 stars because it contains bennett's signature writing style which I love. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) her second book greatly outshines this one.
there's also her pious best friend aubrey who she has a complex relationship with because she hides the abortion and also the boyfriend from her, but then the best friend and her childhood boyfriend get married. and then there is the whole her ex boyfriend cheating on aubrey with her thing.
throughout the book there are sections where these old church ladies will speak as a collective "we" about the events of the book. they are the eponymous mothers. I didn't really like the inclusion of their narrative voice, to be honest. I feel like it laid the themes on a bit too thick, and they were also really really annoying. these women are basically those people who act they have your best interests at heart but really will just gossip about you. they're super sexist, of course
I feel like this book had a lot of potential to become a really rich story about religious trauma (explored through aubrey) and guilt + grief (nadia) but instead it lost a lot of its initial shimmer to me after the first 100 pages. I really don't tend to like it when authors switch perspectives around a lot of make a bunch of years pass in a story without good reason: those narrative techniques to me usually indicate that the author is digging for things to write about because they don't have enough material to flesh out their novel with one time period/perspective alone. I also found luke's perspective distracting and not particularly compelling. he was also insanely annoying and I feel like Brit Bennett's message got muddled by her trying to be compassionate to him?? but she also made him so horrible.
This book is only getting 3.5 stars because it contains bennett's signature writing style which I love. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) her second book greatly outshines this one.