A review by cillantro
Mother by Maxim Gorky

3.0

I don't know how to characterize this book. It's gentle, heartfelt, hopeful, bold, but extremely heavy-handed and saccharine. It's Soviet propaganda, but it doesn't pretend to be anything otherwise. I tried to take it as it was, trying not to think about my criticisms of the politics of the USSR (though of course this book was written a little before then).

So, I tried to simply focus on the world in the novel. However, the intense message of love for your fellow humans would ring truer if Gorky hadn't been a staunch homophobe who believed that Nazis were gay and that gay people were ruining humanity.

All in all, it's very sentimental. The prose is hit-and-miss. Though I'm a lover of flowery writing, sometimes it feels out of place in certain sections. Some passages contained too many analogies and metaphors to describe emotions and scenes. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the pace of the narrative. It didn't linger too much, but also wasn't too quick.

I probably wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, but it was a nice experience from time to time.