motherhood

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The Mothers (2016) by Brit Bennett

The Mothers by Britt Bennett author of The Vanishing Half

The third novel in my reading about mothers and motherhood is Brit Bennett’s The Mothers, the story of two young people, Nadia and Luke, who have both encountered significant turning points in their young lives, when they turn towards each other. Nadia, an only child, is mourning her mother, lost to suicide and Luke is nursing a football injury that has removed him from the limelight.

If Nadia Turner had asked, we would’ve told her to stay away from him.

Their coming together and drifting apart might have had less of an affect on their lives, had it not been for the teen pregnancy and cover-up that resulted from it, forever creating a fusion between them they have trouble negotiating, despite the years and distance they have put between them.

Her mother had died a month ago and she was drawn to anyone who wore their pain outwardly, the way she couldn’t.

Elder Knowledge and Wisdom

Luke is the son of a pastor and within that community are the older ‘Mothers‘, who provide the ‘We‘ voice to the narrative that isn’t always kind, it is the voice of those who have seen it all before.

We would’ve told her that all together, we got centuries on her. If we laid all our lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself. In all that living, we have known men,. Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more.

Photo by M. Kirkgoz Pexels.com

Though they don’t comment directly to Nadia or provide support to her, they are the all seeing, all knowing voice of the past, who also know that one has to live through their own experiences to learn anything, and so they enjoy their gossiping and smug knowledge of knowing how it will end before the living is done.

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. But we didn’t. We shared this sour secret, a secret that began when Nadia Turner got knocked up by the pastor’s son and went to the abortion clinic downtown to take care of it.

Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including her pious best friend Aubrey, the distance she puts between herself and her hometown, her foreign boyfriend and her higher education assist her in creating a new life far from unwanted memories.

Community Intentions

The Mothers meet regularly to pray. They read the prayer request cards and pray for the community who share their pain, their resentments, their anger and fears. And that too, is how they know all that is going on in their community, the clues that along with chatter create the jigsaw puzzle of lives that come and go among them.

That evening, we found a prayer card with his name on it in the wooden box outside the door. In the centre, in all lowercase, the words pray for her. We didn’t know which her he meant – his dead wife or his reckless daughter – so we prayed for both.

Youth Must Experience It

The novel follows the lives of the young people as they eventually confront the things they have tried to ignore, when they realise the impact they continue to have on them and slowly, the story behind the lost mother comes to light.

But she saw then that Nadia didn’t speak about her mother because she wanted to preserve her, keep her for herself. Aubrey didn’t speak about her mother because she wanted to forget that she’d ever had one.

The Mothers is more reflective and less intense than the previous two novels I read, which concerned the death of a child, whereas here it is the loss of a mother and the loss of becoming a mother, and others for whom their mothers, though present, provide no solace at all. And the little spoken about loss of a potential father, a failure to perform one of the primary functions, to protect his family.

Each of the three stories shows communities as both supportive and punitive and mothers as complex products of their circumstances. Love is present, but so are disappointment, misunderstanding, judgement and the fear of not being enough. Silence too, becomes both a survival strategy and a cause of generational pain, broken through often by external friendships, safe spaces where women can express openly and move through their grievances towards healing.

I found The Mothers a thoughtful exploration of complex issues that youth encounter and then must live with and navigate and grow through. It shows the numerous ways people do that, sometimes in community, other times in isolation, but always seeking to find that peaceful place within which they can exist.

3 novels of mothers and motherhooh The Mother Yvvette Edwards Mother to Mother Sindiwe Magona The Mothers Brit Bennett

What is Brit Bennett Working On Now?

It has been a while since Brit Bennet’s second novel The Vanishing Half (2020), so I checked to see what she might be working on and learned that while there is no publication date yet, she is a ‘few drafts deep’ into a third novel, focused on R&B musicians, a girl group, about two singers who have a lifelong feud. It is said to deal with themes of rivalry, celebrity, and identity.

Author, Brit Bennett

Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan.

Her debut novel The Mothers was a New York Times bestseller, and her second novel The Vanishing Half was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.

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Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona

Mother to Mother is the second novel in my reading about the complexity of motherhood from three different perspectives, from within London’s Caribbean diaspora in The Mother by Yvvette Edwards, apartheid-era South Africa in Mother to Mother, and contemporary Black America in Brit Bennett’s The Mothers.

Making Sense of a Tragedy

 Sindiwe Magona decided to write this novel when she discovered that Fulbright Scholar Amy Biehl, who was set upon and killed by a mob of black youth in August 1993, died just a few yards away from her own permanent residence in Guguletu, Capetown.

She then learned that one of the boys held responsible for the killing was in fact her neighbor’s son. Magona began to imagine how easily it might have been her own son caught up in the wave of violence that day.

The outpouring of grief, outrage, and support for the Biehl family was unprecedented in the history of the country. Amy, a white American, had gone to South Africa to help black people prepare for the country’s first truly democratic elections. Ironically, therefore, those who killed her were precisely the people for whom, by all subsequent accounts, she held a huge compassion, understanding the deprivations they had suffered.

Mother to Mother, A Novel

When there are tragedies such as what happened here, usually and rightly, a lot is heard about the world of the victim, their family, friends, achievements and aspirations. The Biehl case was no exception.

Amy Biehl’s Last Home: A Bright Life, a Tragic Death, and a Journey of Reconciliation in South Africa by Steven D. Gish

Sindiwe Magona reflects and asks; are there no lessons to be had from knowing something of that other world, the opposite environments to those that grow and nurture the likes of Amy Biehl; to grow up under the legacy of apartheid, a society where you were born a second-class citizen, a system that relegated black people to the periphery and treated them as sub-human.

What was the world of this young woman’s killers, the world of those, young as she was young, whose environment failed to nurture them to the higher ideals of humanity and who, instead, became lost creatures of malice and destruction?

In reality, there were four young men, in the novel there is just one. Through the mother’s narrative of her life raising her children in this oppressive environment, through her memories, we come to understand a number of factors that contributed to the continuing dehumanisation of a population that became more and agitated as the little they had was taken from them, destroyed, bulldozed over and opportunities few and far between and one race of privileged people responsible.

Mandisa’s Lament

Mandisa, bewildered and grief-stricken, on learning the news of her son’s involvement in this terrible tragedy, mines her memory and reflects on the life her son has lived, that brought them to this moment. In looking for answers she paints a vision of her son and his world, the world she has inhabited and done her best to navigate and lead her children through, as if in conversation with that other mother, the one who has lost a daughter, forever.

Forced Removals

What began as a rumour, that the government was going to forcibly remove all Africans from numerous settlements to a common area set aside for them all was initially laughed off, not believed. Everyone talked about it, but not with concern, it was impossible.

There were so many of us in Blouvlei, a tin-shack location where I grew up, Millions and millions. Where would the government start? Who could believe such a thing?

The sea of tin shacks lying lazily in the flats, surrounded by gentle white hills, sandy hills dotted with scrub, gave us (all of us, parents and children alike) such a fantastic feeling of security we could not conceive of its ever ceasing to exist. This, convinced of the inviolability offered by our tremendous numbers, the size of our settlement, the belief that our dwelling places, our homes, and our burial places were sacred, we laughed at the absurdity of the rumour.

Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona "a tour de force" Andre Brink

But the government was not laughing. When the rumour paled and was all but forgotten, one day if returned with a deafening roar, as an aeroplane dropped flyers warning them all of the impending deadline, that they would be forcibly removed. To Guguletu.

A grey, unending mass of squatting structures. Ugly. Impersonal. Cold to the eye. Most with their doors closed. Afraid.

Oppressed by all that surrounds them…by all that is stuffed into them…by the very manner of their conception. And, in turn, pressing down hard on those whom, shameless pretence stated, they were to protect and shelter.

Segregation was enforced and black people were removed from their settlements, from suburbs where only white people would now live, pushed into a place and among people they did not know, in challenging conditions and the need to find work.

On A Dark Day, Resentments Build

The narrative is written in two timelines, the day of the protest, when Mandisa is sent home early from her job as a cleaner in a white woman’s home, due to the unrest – interspersed with memories of how their lives came to arrive at this point. She waits and waits for her son to come home and becomes increasingly concerned at his lack of appearance.

10.05 PM – Wednesday 25 August 1993

…where was Mxolisi? Not for the first time, I asked myself what it was that made him so different from the other two children… What had made Mxolisi stop confiding in me? And when had that wall of silence sprung between us? I couldn’t remember. He used to tell me everything…and then, one day I woke up to find I knew almost nothing about his activities or his friends.

As the family circumstances are shared and the life of this mother is revealed, I am reminded of the two autobiographies I have read, of the similarly challenging life and raising of her own children the author in similar circumstances. Although this is fiction, there is resemblance to her own circumstances, no doubt the reason why she understands this could so easily have been any one of those mothers in their neighbourhood.

The story leads up to the actual event, to what occurred on that day, the clash, the terrible crossing of paths, of being in the wrong pace at the wrong time, the burning hatred of an oppressor, the innocent face of one who looked like them, the dark desire of a race seeking revenge, the deep resentment of decades expressing itself in rage.

My son, the blind but sharpened arrow of the wrath of his race.

Your daughter, the sacrifice of hers. Blindly chosen. Flung towards her sad fate by fortune’s cruellest slings.

It is a courageous attempt to present a community in the grip of violent rage, to allow the voice of a mother to speak and share the growth of a family, the intense pain of all touched by a tragedy, to consider a path of redemption, to learn something from it. There may not be any conclusions, but perhaps we are all, all the better for being open to listen to the mothers, to find empathy for people doing the best they can in challenging circumstances. A thought provoking, powerful read.

Restorative Justice

In a final end piece to the story of Amy Biehl, after four men were convicted and given 18 -year prison sentences, there was in July 1987, an appearance before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty committee to argue for their release from prison, due to the politically motivated nature of the crime.

The parents, the Biehl’s attended the trial and shook hands with the parents of all four men. They understood the context of the South African struggle better than many South Africans.

Restorative justice communities of care and reconciliation, victim reparation, offender responsibility and accountability

The men spoke and asked for forgiveness. After consideration, all four were pardoned and the Biehl family supported their release.

Linda and Peter Biehl created a humanitarian organisation, the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust to develop and empower youth in the townships, in order to discourage further violence.

Two of the men who had been convicted of her murder went on to work for the foundation as part of its programs.

Further Reading

Amy Biehl’s Last Home: A Bright Life, a Tragic Death, and a Journey of Reconciliation in South Africa by Steven D. Gish

South African Press Association: Excerpts from SAPA Coverage of Biehl Amnesty Trials

Author, Sindiwe Magona

Sindiwe Magona (born.1943) a graduate of Columbia University, is an author, poet, playwright, storyteller, actor, and inspirational speaker. Magona retired from the United Nations, where she worked in the Anti-Apartheid Radio Programmes until June 1994 and UN Film Archives till her retirement. After twenty-five years in New York, she relocated to her home country, South Africa.

Her writings include To My Children’s Children and Forced to Grow (autobiography); Living, Loving, and Lying Awake at Night and Push-Push and Other Stories (short stories).

Her novels are When the Village Sleeps, Mother to Mother, Beauty’s Gift, Life is a Hard but Beautiful Thing (YA) and Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle! Please, take photographs! a book of poetry, Modjaji Books and Awam Ngqo,(short stories) and Twelve Books of Folktales – written in both English and Xhosa.

Magona has written over a 120 children’s books, including: The Best Meal Ever and Skin We Are In and Her awards include include Honorary Doctorates from Hartwick College, USA; Rhodes University; and Nelson Mandela University; and the Order of iKhamanga.

My writing, on the whole, is my response to current social ills, injustice, misrepresentation, deception – the whole catastrophe that is the human existence. Sindiwe Magona

Next Up, the third novel : The Mothers by Brit Bennett

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The Mother by Yvvette Edwards

Mothers in Literature

I had long wished to read Yvvette Edwards second novel, The Mother (2016) after very much enjoying her Booker longlisted A Cupboard Full of Coats (2011). I decided to read it alongside two novels on my shelf with similar themes of the bonds, burdens and breakthroughs of motherhood.

The three novels I chose are set in different countries and contexts: The Mother by Yvvette Edwards (UK) is set in London’s Caribbean community, Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona is set in apartheid-era South Africa, and The Mothers by Brit Bennett is set in contemporary Black America.

Sindiwe Magona has written numerous novels; however I have read and reviewed her autobiographies To My Children’s Children (1990) and Forced to Grow (1992), while Brit Bennett is well known for her novel that addresses the theme of passing, The Vanishing Half (2020).

The Complexity of Motherhood

All three novels expose motherhood as fraught with social pressure, moral judgment, and emotional complexity. Despite the different settings, they collectively form a global conversation about motherhood, resilience, and the human cost of structural and racial inequality.

3 novels of mothers and motherhooh The Mother Yvvette Edwards Mother to Mother Sindiwe Magona The Mothers Brit Bennett

In The Mother, Marcia grapples with grief and guilt after the murder of her son.

In Mother to Mother, Mandisa reflects on her life while writing to the mother of the girl her son has murdered.

And The Mothers, focuses on young women (and a collective “we” voice of church “mothers”) navigating the expectations of womanhood, including unwanted pregnancy.

The Mother by Yvvette Edwards

The Mother is the story of a mother’s struggle to come to terms with understanding her teenage son’s violent death, it is both a courtroom drama following the murder of Marcia and Lloydie’s 16-year-old son Ryan and a story of transformation and healing through grief.

I used to be good at making decisions, took it for granted completely, imagined it was one of those things that because I’d always been good at it, I would continue to be good at it, and then something like what happened to Ryan comes along and you realise some things are just temporary gifts granted for part of your life only, like the headful of hair you imagined would be yours forever that you went to sleep with one night and as usual but woke the following morning to find gone, clean gone.

Suffering Together, Drifting Apart – the Complexity of Grief

The Mother by Yvvette Edwards courtroom drama in London youth stabbing gang culture

Marcia wants to be present every day at court, her husband Lloydie does not. Increasingly emotionally estranged, she does not understand what he does all day, where he goes. Their habits are changing and they seem to be leaving each other behind, dealing with the loss in completely different ways, on their own.

Lloydie is putting my cup of tea on the side when I return to the bedroom. He looks slightly sheepish, is probably annoyed with himself for the mistiming that has meant he has found himself alone with me when we are both awake and alert. He looks at me without speaking.

‘Aren’t you going to ask how it went?’ I say.

It’s not the question I intended; too in-your-face, accusatory. I didn’t want to start the discussion here but it’s out now, I can’t take it back.

His tone is dutiful. ‘How did it go?’

‘It was hard. Listening. Seeing that boy, his mother. Very hard.’

The Need to Understand

Marci is determined to be present every day, to understand why this happened and comes to realise that there may be things about her son that she did not know.

Understanding has been my problem from the start. How is it possible that my son was doing all the right things, that as parents, Lloydie and I, we were doing all the right things, and yet still Ryan is dead?

The novel follows the case and outside the court other events begin to shed light on the situation, Marcia’s beliefs and assumptions are challenged. In her need to know, she becomes reckless.

She observes the boy who is being charged, his fixed stare and has already decided his fate.

…he stares ahead as if it is all beneath him, and as usual I find it unnerving. I have to say that single quality in him is enough to convince me that he did it, that he’s guilty because he has something in his aura of the type of person who could kill someone at six thirty, then stroll home, have dinner and a hot bath, followed by an early night of unbroken sleep.

Edwards is adept at tapping into the realms of Ryan’s peers and the insidious, threatening world of youth gang culture, which comes into full view through he character of Sweetie, the girl caught between the earnest world of Ryan and the manipulative obedience she has to Tyson Manley and his type.

It is a thought provoking story of complicated parenting and motherhood highlighting effects of judgment, truth seeking, and the social forces that shape personal and family outcomes, while reflecting on the particular role of mother. Motherhood becomes a lifelong, consuming identity, the loss of a child, in this case, destabilising her sense of self.

Author, Yvvette Edwards

Yvvette Edwards is a British East Londoner of Montserratian origin and author of two novels, A Cupboard Full of Coats (2011) nominated for The Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize, and The Mother (2016). Her short stories have been published in anthologies and broadcast on radio.

She is interested in writing that challenges the single narrative, giving voice to characters who are absent or under-represented in contemporary fiction.

An Upcoming Novel in March 2026

Good Good Loving, Yvvette Edwards first book in almost a decade, will be published in March 2026 by Virago. The synopsis reads:

Good Good Loving Yvvette Edwards a multi-generational British-Caribbean family across five decades

“Ellen’s big, beautiful family are gathered around her hospital bed as she prepares to slip away… her children have chosen now of all times to have a never-ending discussion about all her failings. Every single tiny thing they think she’s done wrong over the years – and the one big thing too. Even after everything, after all the sacrifices Ellen has made for every last ungrateful one of them, they still all take their father’s side. If only they knew the whole story.

“Moving backwards in time through all the decisive moments that have shaped Ellen’s life – the disasters, celebrations and surprises, the revelations, confrontations and betrayals – Good Good Loving is the vibrant story of a multi-generational British-Caribbean family across five decades.”

Next up is Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother :

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Nesting by Roísin O’Donnell

I have added this new title to my pile of books to read for Reading Ireland Month 2025, since it came to my attention, when it was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025.

On the Run, Creating Home

Nesting by Rosisin O'Donnell longlisted for Womens Prize fiction 2025 Reading Ireland Month

Nesting is a visceral observation of one worldly capable woman trying to create a safe, stable home environment for her preschool age daughters in Dublin.

At the outset, Ciara appears to be living an idyllic middle class suburban life in a leafy suburban of Dublin, until that day – after bringing in the washing, shortly before her handsome civil servant husband is due to arrive home, she bundles her 3 & 5 yr old girls into the car and leaves – the marriage.

Every memory, even the good ones, are laced with clues, with red flags, but also with the critical voice within, that constantly judges her and has kept her there until now. Her battle will not be just with survival and the actions of her husband, but the battle against a conditioned life that resides within her mind, talking constantly, undermining her.

There it is again, that voice in her head. Haven’t you got what you wanted? The thing you’ve been secretly longing for? A lovely home in Ireland. Two little girls. Pigtails curling in the salty spray, jumping around in Minnie Mouse swimsuits with frills around the bums. Ryan, a loyal, hard-working husband. The type of man who other women sneak glances at, when he’s pushing the swings or ordering lunch, or standing – as he is right now – bare chested, towel drying his hair. And yet – on this bright day with seagulls screeching – there’s a gathering weight in her chest, like the feeling before thunder.

The Need for Safety, A Refuge

As the novel opens she is about to leave home for the second time with the girls, she has little money and nowhere to stay, but the intimidating psychological abuse she is subject to from her husband, has arrived at a tipping point. Inside that home, she is unable to think herself into a solution, so she runs.

It’s a habit that started when she was pregnant with Sophie. She used to call it ‘nesting’. That thing women do when they sense their baby is arriving soon. Grouting, hoovering, taking a mad notion to paint the backyard wall Azores Blue. Only, she didn’t sense an arrival but an impending threat. Cleaning, painting, fixing every centimetre of that house felt like the only thing that was safe.

And then the mountain she must climb to establish stability for the three of them, the constant demands of small children, the intimidating messages she is bombarded with, the ticking bomb of needing to get employed quickly and the near impossible task of renting a home as a young single mother in a city going through a housing crisis, with a severe housing shortage, with overpriced rentals and family across a border, unable to do much more than provide moral support..

Battling the System, the Enablers

Full of tension, this novel speeds along thriller-like, as Ciara tries to gain traction in her life and avoid the pitfalls and obstacles, including the compulsory nightly 8pm check in at the temporary hotel housing and the shame of being told to use the back entrance. Determined to escape the lure of going back, Ciara perseveres with the challenge of choosing safety over risk, when all the odds feel stacked against her.

You feel the vulnerability, the fear, the relentless pressure and overwhelm experienced, knowing she is one of the few with the determination and willpower to not go back. She will be tested.

Ciara bites her lip. Fighting the urge to tell Ryan everything. Where they are staying. What they had for dinner. It’s hard to justify her need to keep him informed of her every move. To keep herself under surveillance.

It’s a roller coaster ride of will she, won’t she, as she struggles to not give in to what at times seems the easier, self-sacrificing route…totally gripping, emotionally charged, an uncomfortable cathartic but necessary read.

Not an easy read, but a grim reminder of the absolute importance of every person to have some means of independence and a recognition of the signs of coercive control and psychological abuse in relationships and the path out.

Chair of judges for the Women’s Prize Kit de Waal said the book was:

‘a moving story, well told about what it’s like to try and leave an abusive relationship, the hurdles, the stigma, the doubt, the ease and temptation of return. Not maudlin or depressing, there’s lots of light here but ultimately this is about a system ripe for change where getting help is nearly as hard as escape itself.’

Further Reading

Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025: In Conversation with Roisin O’Donnell – the book, idea inspiration, the writing & creative process, advice to writers, author whose work has impacted her, favorite author.

The Guardian: Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell review – a tense portrait of coercive control

Author, Roisin O’Donnell

Roisín O’Donnell is an award-winning Irish author. She won the prize for Short Story of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2018, and was shortlisted for the same prize in 2022. She is the author of the story collection Wild Quiet, longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award.

Her short fiction has featured in The Stinging Fly, The Tangerine, the Irish Times and many other places. Other stories have been selected for major anthologies such as The Long Gaze Back, and have featured on RTÉ Radio. Nesting is her first novel. She lives near Dublin with her two children.

Reading Ireland Month 2025 Best Irish literature
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All My Mothers (2021) by Joanna Glen

I picked this book up because of its premise of a child having questions about her early life and origins, sensing she is being lied to by her parents.

A 30 Year Story from 80’s London to Córdoba

Adoption Motherhood Mothers

The book is 480 pages and most of the first half is narrated by Eva as a child or teenager. It begins as she is starting school and beginning to develop friendships. She befriends Bridget Blume and is besotted. Not just by her, but by her entire family, especially her mother who is so unlike Eva’s mother whom she calls Cherie (like her father does).

At school Eva is deeply affected by a book the teacher reads ‘The Rainbow Rained Us’, in which a rabbit throws a stone at the rainbow of Noah’s Ark breaking it apart into hundreds of multicoloured mothers who repopulate the earth with children.

The Many Colours of Mother Love

There Blue Mother stood in a mesmerising cornucopia of blues, at the edge of a turquoise sea, laughing, the wind in her hair, surrounded by her blue family.
‘Blue Mother is free and open and speaks from her heart.’
She sounded exactly like Bridget’s mother – utterly perfect.

From then on she refers to her mother as Pink Mother and Bridget’s mother as Blue Mother.

Pink Mother was sitting upright in a kind of fairy-tale bed, a bit like my mother and father’s, a four-poster, with a roof and curtainy droops around it.
No,no,no.
‘Pink Mother is delicate and feminine,’ said Miss Feast, explaining that delicate meant not strong.

When they are asked to share a baby photo, Eva becomes even more convinced than she already was, that her mother is not her mother, there is no photo of her as a baby, nothing before the age of three and a half.

The novel’s first half follows her through primary school, her developing friendship and first great loss, first the loss of a favourite teacher, then a death that will result in her friend’s family moving to another country and then abandonment by her father, who returns to Spain and rarely if ever makes contact.

Eva’s personality develops and is compromised by these losses and causes her to develop or accept superficial relationships, taking some time to realise what she lost by neglecting what has been meaningful to her.

Hispanic Studies, La Mezquita, A Headless Nun

In the second half of the novel she has started a university degree, changing locations due to the demands of her boyfriend Michael.

The pace really picks up in this half, perhaps because we have left the child narrator behind, so Eva becomes less introspective and more in charge of acting on the questions and thoughts she has and voicing some of the strong opinions she has.

When told they will spend a summer semester in Córdoba, Spain, the separation from all that is familiar and expected of her, marks the beginning of a transformation and a quest into looking for the answer to questions she has about her origins.

la mezquita the grand mosque in Cordoba, Spain
Photo Juan L. Secu on Pexels.com

The second half is something of an adventure as she develops a new friend Carrie who is interested in helping her and the two begin to consider not returning to their previous lives, to stay in Córdoba.

As Eva enters her 20’s her relationships and perspective begin to evolve, although she remains somewhat detached, circumspect and emotionally distant. With the presence of those around her, she begins to understand the complexity of being a mother, of being mothered and that judgments can change, as can people, especially when they find those relationships that are mutually nurturing.

The final third of the jumps into a second person narrative perspective ‘you’ and becomes somewhat nostalgic and didn’t work quite so well as the preceding chapters. It’s like the beginnings of a letter to a little girl who is still a baby, perhaps the thing that she had missed from her own life, being provided for another.

Writing From Experience versus Imagination or Observation

It is an interesting and captivating read, however I couldn’t help but feel as I was reading that this was imagined, rather than felt, because I am interested in books, fiction or nonfiction that come from the experience of separation.

In an interview with Carolyn Ray of JourneyWoman Bookclub, Joanna Glen shared that one of her aims was to explore the question, What is Our Deepest Longing?

I suppose the motherhood theme came next thinking what is our deepest longing that we have right from the beginning and of course a baby’s deepest longing is to gaze into the mother’s eyes and receive the gaze of love back. So I was thinking, what would be the most powerful or perhaps the saddest lack, would be not to feel that connection. That would be a very visceral fundamental lack.

She shares more about her own experience in the interview, which was the opposite of what she explores in the novel regarding the mother child connection, but brings alive the adventure of living abroad, in the town of Córdoba as a young person.

Overall, an enjoyable summer read that is likely to spark an interest in Córdoba, if like me you have never been there and one that celebrates female friendship and connection across different age groups and cultural backgrounds.

Further Reading

TripFiction Review: All My Mothers by Joanna Glen, coming of age novel mainly set in Córdoba. Aug 2021

Author, Joanna Glen

Joanna Glen’s novels include All My Mothers and The Other Half of Augusta Hope, which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award.

She and her husband live in Brighton.

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Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2024

The Women’s Prize for Fiction have announced their shortlist of six novels. You can view the entire longlist here.

Identity, Resilience, Migrant Experiences, Family Relationships

Many of the books depict characters who are navigating seismic changes in their identity, undergoing a process of self-reckoning and self-acceptance, with several dealing with the inheritance of trauma and the resilience of women overcoming the weight of the past.

Half of the books in this year’s shortlist explore the migrant experience through different lenses, offering moving, distinct, explorations of race, identity and family, of the West’s false promise and the magnetism of home.

The shortlist encompasses stories that both focus on intimate family relationships, as well as those that convey a sweep of history, always with an eye on the particularity of women’s experience, whether in the home or in the context of war and political upheaval.

The Shortlist

Below are descriptions of the individual titles, along with a quote from a judge, to help you discern if they might be of interest:

The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (Ireland) published by Jonathan Cape, 283 pgs

A psychologically astute examination of family dynamics and the nature of memory. Enright’s prose is gorgeous and evocative and scalpel sharp.

Nell – funny, brave and much loved – is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell’s leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. Across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel’s famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions.

A consideration of love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A generational saga tracing the inheritance of trauma and wonder, it is a testament to the resilience of women in the face of promises, false and true. An exploration of the love between a mother and daughter – sometimes fierce, often painful, always transcendent.

Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan (Sri Lanka), published by Viking, 348 pgs (see my review here)

Visceral, historical, emotional. It is 300 pages of must-read prose. A powerful book that has the intimacy of memoir, the range and ambition of an epic, and tells a truly unforgettable story about the Sri Lankan civil war.

Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes her on a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their best friend, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. She must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm?

Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville (Australia), published by Canongate Books, 256 pgs

[It] follows the life of Dolly, who really is restless. It begins in the 1880s in rural Australia, and it follows Dolly’s ambitions to live a bigger life than the one she’s been given.

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the 19th century, when society’s long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able – despite the cost – to make a life she could call her own.

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (Britain/Palestine), published by Jonathan Cape, 336 pgs (see my review here)

How can a production of Hamlet in the West Bank resonate with the residents’ existential issues? Enter Ghost is a beautiful, profound meditation on the role of art in our society and our lives.

After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her sister Haneen. While Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

When Sonia meets the charismatic, candid Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertrude’s lines in classical Arabic with a dedicated group of men who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, all want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer and the warring intensifies, it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.

Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite story of the connection to be found in family and shared resistance.

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy (Ireland), published by Faber & Faber, 233 pgs (my review)

A full-bodied, remorseless, visceral deep dive into the maternal mind. It is ultimately a love story between Soldier, the mother, and Sailor, the son.

In her acclaimed new novel, Claire Kilroy creates an unforgettable heroine, whose fierce love for her young son clashes with the seismic change to her own identity.
As her marriage strains, and she struggles with questions of autonomy, creativity and the passing of time, an old friend makes a welcome return – but can he really offer her a lifeline to the woman she used to be?

River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure (France/China), published by Duckworth, 352 pgs

Set in Shanghai in the 2000s, it’s a novel about reinvention. It’s original, it’s funny, and it’s sometimes heartbreaking as well.

A mesmerising reversal of the east–west immigrant narrative set against China’s economic boom, River East, River West is an exploration of race, identity and family, of capitalism’s false promise and private dreams.

Shanghai, 2007: feeling betrayed by her American mother’s engagement to their rich landlord Lu Fang, fourteen-year-old Alva begins plotting her escape. But the exclusive American School – a potential ticket out – is not what she imagined.

Qingdao, 1985: newlywed Lu Fang works as a lowly shipping clerk. Though he aspires to a bright future, he is one of many casualties of harsh political reforms. Then China opens up to foreigners and capital, and Lu Fang meets a woman who makes him question what he should settle for.

The 2024 Winners

The winner of both the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non Fiction will be announced on June 13th, 2024.

I have only read one from the list, Claire Kilroy’s excellent Soldier, Sailor. I’m most interested in reading V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night and Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost and am reminded that a friend recommended her debut The Parisian back in 2019 (but you know, 700+ pages).

Have you read any of these from the shortlist? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

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Mother of Pearl by Mary Morrissy

I decided to read Mother of Pearl (1996) as a precursor to Mary Morrissy’s latest novel Penelope Unbound (2023), a re-imagined and slightly changed life of Nora Barnacle (the wife of James Joyce) which I intend to read in 2024. Having enjoyed Nuala O’Connor’s excellent novel Nora, I’ll be curious to see where Morrissy takes her.

It is only now, since the death of Joyce’s grandson Stephen in 2020, one of the most litigious heirs in history, that stories can safely be written about Nora and James Joyce – as Stephen did all he could to prevent access or usage of the family archive, including the destruction of hundreds of letters. James Joyce, a brilliant writer with an overprotective grandson

It seems that Mary Morrissy likes to take inspiration from real life characters or stories, and so it was with Mother of Pearl. A little backstory then before reviewing the novel.

Truth Stranger Than Fiction

A notorious baby-snatching case in 1950’s Ireland was the inspiration for Mary Morrissy’s Mother of Pearl. Re-imagining elements of that story, rather than retelling the facts was a decision she made because the truth would have come across to readers as unbelievable. Morrissy in an article on her website explains:

Elizabeth Browne 1950 Dublin kidnap victim

Elizabeth Browne, above, was kidnapped from a pram on Henry Street in Dublin on November 25, 1950. Her kidnapper, Mrs Barbara McGeehan, who lived in Belfast, took her north on the train and passed her off as her own child to her unsuspecting husband.

Four years later – and this is where truth is stranger than fiction – Mrs McGeehan travelled south again and stole another child, this time a boy, Patrick Berrigan, from outside Woolworths on Henry Street. As luck would have it, a fellow passenger on the Belfast train noticed Mrs McGeehan, in particular that she had no milk for her baby, and went to the dining car to get some. Afterwards when the alert was raised about the Berrigan baby kidnap, she remembered this incident and contacted the police.

Mrs McGeehan was traced to her home in the White City estate in Belfast where police found the Berrigan baby and the four-year-old Elizabeth Browne, now renamed Bernadette. In these pre-DNA days, she was identified by a distinctive birth mark, and her parents, news-vendors John and Bridget Browne, travelled to Belfast to claim her.

Identity Trauma

What interested Morrissy in particular, was the identity trauma of a four-year-old being forcibly removed from a loving home and familiar “parents” and being returned to a family, who though biologically related, were strangers to her.

Clearly this was something Elizabeth’s parents thought about or experienced the repercussions of, because there was another twist, a strange fact that once again did not go into the novel. After Mrs McGeehan served her two year jail year sentence for the kidnap, the Browne family contacted her. Following their reconciliation, every year Elizabeth would travel to Belfast to spend a holiday with the very same woman who had kidnapped her.

Though Elizabeth would marry and have her own family, sadly she died at the very young age of 38 years from cancer.

The Novel, A Dark Re-Imagining

A novel in three parts, Mother of Pearl explores perspectives in three women’s lives, the first two will mother the same child, the third is that of the child grown – the consequence of a repressed childhood, of events never talked about, of the effect of those events and years and the suppression of them, on her psyche.

Part 1 – We meet Irene in Granitefield sanotorium, an institution where she spends some years due to having contracted TB. She willingly leaves her family behind and finds some kind of comfort in the hospital environment, electing to remain there as an employee long after she has recovered from her illness and might easily have left.

The operation, they told her, had saved her. But she had lost four of her ribs, cracked open by a giant pair of shears…Without her ribs Irene felt as if part of her protection against the world had been removed.

Standing vigil, she is known to recognise the imminence of death patients. One in particular will be kife changing.

Irene knew the moment she saw Stanley Godwin that he was watching someone beloved die. Healthy people keeping vigil seemed to take on the symptoms of the disease.

This son, who is with his mother, suddenly understands the implications of his mothers death, of the great loss and hole in his life, her absence will mean for him. His attention moves towards Irene.

Inwardly he was quaking. He could comprehend the impending loss; what he couldn’t imagine was his life afterwards. A middle-aged man about to be granted unwanted freedom.

Outside of the institution, longing for a child she knows will not come, brooding on her own losses, Irene succumbs to fantasies and one day indulges her desire, removing a sickly child from a hospital, a baby she names Pearl.

This was her offspring, hers alone, the child of her illness, Irene’s first loss. And she was still out there. Not dead, simply lost. In a hospital ward somewhere, unclaimed, waiting for her mother. This time Irene determined she would tell no one, not even Stanley. She would seek out the child who was rightfully hers, the fruit of Eve’s ribs.

Part 2 – We meet Rita, who becomes Mrs Mel Spain, mother of the baby she had not initially realised how much she wanted, until the day she is taken from her. And the husband Mel, son of an absent father, who feels a yearning to follow in his carefree footsteps.

It didn’t stop Mel wondering, however, how his father had managed the extraordinary trick of disappearing into thin air. He had become invisible by simply walking out of his life. Ten years after the event, as he nursed his fourth drink of the night, Mel finally understood how easy it must have been. It was not, as he had always thought, a daring but calculated move; it was a matter of impulse and extreme selfishness.

Part 3 – we meet the child, a child who remembers little of her early life, who is told stories that don’t resonate with the dream-like memories she has, who feels like an outsider in her family and can not explain to herself why.

Exploring themes of loss, abandonment, denial, Mother of Pearl takes us inside the dysfunction of family, of obsession with and rejection of a child, of the long-lasting impact on those formative years of the compromised adult that will little understand their own inclination(s), as those threads of early development and the scars of traumatic events imprint on their psyche and affect their future selves.

A compelling and thought provoking read that is all the more astounding given the events that propelled the author to recreate such a situation.

Further Reading

The Guardian: Penelope Unbound by Mary Morrissy review – masterly alternative life of Nora Barnacle by John Banville

JSTOR Interview With Mary Morrissy, Studies, An Irish Quarterly Review Vol. 87, No. 347 (Autumn, 1998)

Author, Mary Morrissy

Mary Morrissy was born in Dublin in 1957.  She has published four novels – Mother of Pearl (1995), The Pretender (2000), The Rising of Bella Casey (2013) and Penelope Unbound (2023) and a collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye (1993). 

She won a Hennessy Award for short fiction in 1984 and a prestigious US Lannan Literary Foundation Award in 1995.  Mother of Pearl was shortlisted for the Whitbread/Costa Award and longlisted for the Women’s (Orange)Prize for Fiction (1996) while The Pretender was nominated for the Dublin Impac Award and shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. The Rising of Bella Casey was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award.

A member of Aosdána, she is a journalist, a teacher of creative writing and a literary mentor. She blogs on art, fiction and history at marymorrissy.com

“I suppose I explore a female kind of darkness. My characters tend to be very restricted, restricted emotionally, I mean, by fear and guilt and an inability to move in and inhabit the centre of their own lives. And despite all our so-called modernity, I think this still holds true for thousands of women. We may have broken away from the traps of our mothers’ generation, but there is a long way to travel before women have, if I may use the phrase in this context, parity of esteem. - Interview with Mary Morrissy, Studies, An Irish Quarterly Review Vol. 87, No. 347 (Autumn, 1998)

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Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

Soldier Sailor is on the shortlist for the Irish Book Awards 2023.

Cathy at 746 Books praised this one, as her pick for Novel of the Year, saying it deserved the award attention, so I decided to read it to find out what that was about.

The Clash of Fierce Love versus Stolen Identity

Irish Book Awards 2023 motherhood literary fiction

So, after an eleven year gap since the publication of her last book, following the birth of her son, Claire Kilroy has overcome her writer’s block and “angry few years”, to produce a piercing, visceral account by the unnamed narrator Soldier ravaged by new motherhood, to the child, Sailor.

Here is how the author describes her book:

Soldier Sailor is a mother talking to her sleeping child explaining what was going on during those years he was too young to understand or remember the events around him. She tells him of her love, but also of how difficult, how isolating she found it when motherhood ended her old life. Nothing much happens; one of the main characters, Sailor, has no dialogue. The whole experience is a non-event from the outside, but when you are that soldier pushing the pram, my, what a psychodrama it is.

The novel as the image depicts, zooms right in to the responsibility, the bond and the practice of being mother to a small child, to how it changes EVERYTHING. From the entering into a relationship like no other that exists and the loss of what came before it; to the very different support that a mother might need, and the unlikely place(s) she might find it.

A Mother’s Instinct to Kill

It is not a reflection, it is an act, you will read it and live it, or relive aspects of it, if you have already been there.

Do you know what I would I do for you? I hope not. What would I not do, is the question. The universe careens around us and I shield your sleeping body with my arms, ready to proclaim to the heavens that I would kill for you: that I would kill others for you, that I would kill myself. I would even kill my husband if it came down to it. I swear every woman in my position feels the same. We all go bustling about, pushing shopping trolleys or whatever, acting like love of this voltage is normal; domestic, even.That we know how to handle it. But I don’t.

Using the second person “you” addressed as a monologue to her baby son, the narrative swings between the emotional peaks of a tireless love, to violent frustration and resentment; from the misleading two second Instagram snaps sent to the elsewhere husband, to her thirty second screaming telephone rages, with only the reader, witness to and understanding the riding crescendo of events that lead from one of those events to the next. A bewildered husband, observing the peaks, oblivious.

Your sleeve is in your dinner, my husband remarked. He wasn’t there but he didn’t have to be there. He was always there when things were going wrong. Yet never there to help. The luxury, the sheer luxury of sending a last-minute message saying you wouldn’t be home that evening. It would be a decade – more – before I could do the same. What does he eat? he had texted me the one time he was left in charge?

Sons and Fathers Take Note

To read this account, especially because of the culture within which it stems from, one that for many years locked up its women who expressed too loudly their discontent, or behaved in ways considered improper, is to understand a little of what was labelled hysteria – one of the natural consequences of needs not being met. Forget the narrative arc, read this and you plunge into the subject, you become it, you feel it, you remember bits of it. The son is warned, made to understand, his future depends on it.

I was firmly in my wrong mind and liable to do anything, so off I went, down the stairs, out the door, up the drive, through the gate, along the road, overcome by a wildness that I needed to convert to movement or else risk doing something stupid, and by stupid I mean destructive because words have many meanings, Sailor, and you must deploy them with care because they can inflict real hurt.

The mother like her infant child, is reborn yet will only realise she has inhabited this new being ‘the mother who birthed‘ when it is too late, when this tiny creature she loves so fiercely and will protect with her life, claims her, and in her most challenging moments, she like him, will feel the desire to scream, to run, to escape or somehow figure out, how to make ‘the other’ understand.

What struck me as the starkest contradiction of all was that, having navigated this much of life – the volatility of youth, of love and loss, the agony and the ecstasy – the closest I had come to losing my mind was during the period known as settling down.

Friendship for Hope and Healing

motherhood Soldier Sailor Claire Kilroy
Photo by Oleksandr P on Pexels.com

This text will not speak of the quiet moments, it is the intersection of all the moments lived, of the brutal awakening that is ‘becoming a mother’ and the warning to ‘the other’ that did not give birth, who is part of the journey, to prepare for this change and get ready to adapt, to support, to listen, to learn to be ‘the friend’ she is going to need.

One day she encounters an old friend, and these follow up meets mark a turning point, to being seen again, to being understood, and something dangerous shifts, quiets. Small gestures, moments of listening, the beginning of a form of solidarity.

We were better together my friend and I. Better parents. I was anyway. I was a better mother to you when I was around my friend. But a worse wife.

We arrive at the end – where she imagines moments years down the road ahead – with a kind of relief, knowing that with age and stage, the distance between those peaks will lessen, the relationships will either adapt or crumble, that true friendships will witness and endure it all.

An utterly compelling read that you won’t want to put down.

Further Reading

The Observer Review: Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy review – a mother’s confession after the fight of her life by Stephanie Merritt, 12 June 2023

The Irish Times Review: Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy: An astute, provocative, intriguing novel about motherhood – A virtuosic set-piece late on veers so far into nightmare territory, it feels as if we’re reading a thriller by Sarah Gilmartin

Eason Novel of the Year, Interview Q & A With Claire Kilroy

Claire Kilroy, Author

Claire Kilroy is the author of five novels including Soldier Sailor, All Summer, Tenderwire, and The Devil I Know. She was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2004 and has been shortlisted for many other prizes, including the Irish Novel of the Year and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.

She studied at Trinity College and lives in Dublin.

What do you hope readers will take away from your narrative?

It is so easy to dismiss a mother and her work, and a father and his – one of the main characters is a stay-at-home dad. I had no idea what minding an infant involved and had regarded it as easy, unchallenging (I am mortified to admit that), so I hope I have revealed how demanding it is, but also how rewarding, never mind how important. I hope more fathers will get involved in raising children because it changes you, it remakes you, you become more compassionate. I don’t think Trump and Putin would be the awful tyrants they are had they cared for, well, anyone. It doesn’t have to be a child, just any person or creature who needs care.    

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Soundings, Journeys in the Company of Whales by Doreen Cunningham

Soundings is a dual narrative memoir, that recounts two journeys a woman makes, pursuing her dream to see the grey whales that migrate up the coast from Mexico where her journey begins, to the northernmost Arctic town of Utqiagvik.

The Iñupiat have thrived there, in a place periodically engulfed in ice and darkness, for thousands of years, bound closely together by their ancient culture and their relationships with the animals they hunt, most notably the magnificent and mysterious bowhead whale. I hadn’t just seen the whales there, I’d joined a family hunting crew, travelling with them in a landscape of astonishing beauty and danger.

Doreen Cunningham Whales memoir nonfiction

The book is structured so that each chapter alternates the twin journeys, the first one when she is a young BBC journalist on a sabbatical – the trip isn’t a job assignment, she is winging it, not knowing ahead of time where she might stay, or that she might join an indigenous whale hunt – to be in a position to observe the whales.

She is going there to listen, observe and with luck, participate.

The idea was that you could immerse yourself in a place and absorb more than if you were questioning people as a reporter and narrowing the world down into stories. I was supposed to take thinking time away from the relentless news cycle, open my mind and return bursting with creativity and new ideas.

The second trip is more of an escape from her current reality, that of a young single mother awarded sole custody, who can not afford to live in her home (due to high mortgage payments), reluctantly returned to her parents home in Jersey – who then decides she wants to make a return trip and provide her two-year-old son a formative experience of travel and whale watching.

I’d felt so alive then, so connected to other people and to the natural world. If only I could feel that way again and give that feeling to Max.

I recalled reading Scottish poet and nature essay writer Kathleen Jamie’s Surfacing, where she visits and brings alive an archaeological site Nunallaq, in the Yup’ik village in Quinhagak, Southern Alaska.

Kathleen Jamie Essays Surfacing Nature Writing

Doreen Cunnningham’s interest in whales and the environment inclines more towards the science, research and a personal desire for a sense of belonging and a large dose of wishful thinking, than the more poetic and philosophical Jamie, who went towards the tundra in search of surfaces that might reconnect us to the past. However, the two books together make informative and astonishing reading.

I told myself I would relearn from the whales how to mother, how to endure, how to live.
Beneath the surface, secretly, I longed to get back to northernmost Alaska, to the community who’d kept me safe in the harsh beauty of the Arctic and to Billy, the whale hunter who’d loved me.

Once you realise that the narrative goes back and forth, it becomes easier to stick with it, the chapters in the more recent past focus as much on the logistics of trying to travel with a child, car seat and stroller, finding kindred spirits who might assist getting her on a boat to see the whales, while doing her best to avoid those fellow travellers who look askance at a young mother, attempting the extraordinary.

As they travel, she also shares something of the challenges in the past of reporting on climate change, the reluctance to report on the environment and the habit many broadcasters had of always finding a sceptic to present an alternative view to the facts.

What was going on was that media all over the world had regularly been allowing sceptics o misrepresent science without adequately challenging them, and presenting them as though they carried equal scientific weight to mainstream climate researchers…This ‘insistence on bringing in dissident voices into what are in effect settled debates’ created what the report called ‘false balance’.

In her earlier visit, she takes time to listen to their stories, of the first ships that came in, bringing equipment, alcohol and disease. She hears of the social problems of another indigenous people, of children sent away, of PTSD, of a sense of rage and powerlessness, of a need to educate themselves in order to better represent and protect their culture and ways.

Bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) from Natural by Biodiversity Heritage Library is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

She also hears of the effect of the warming of the ocean first hand, its impact on animals, on the ice, on patterns of behaviours, of the risk to their livelihood and comes to understand the importance differences between a people who live in harmony with their environment and depend on it and those who came intent on exploiting it.

We also learn a little of her childhood experiences, of her wild pony Bramble, of an Irish granny and the songs she still sings that the whales seem to respond to. She injects enough of the personal story to keep the pace going, as the flow risks at times being overwhelmed by the facts and background research. However, as I go back and reread the passages I highlighted, I find it interesting to encounter some of this information a second time around, now that I’ve removed the expectation of a flowing narrative.

There is a something in this book for everyone, it defies genre and shows the gentle, yet vulnerable courage of a young mother persevering against the odds, seizing the reins of her life, following her intuition and going on a grand adventure with a small boy, who is perhaps more likely the greater teacher to her than the elusive whales, on motherhood.

Doreen Cunningham, Author

Doreen Cunningham is an Irish-British writer born in Wales. After studying engineering she worked briefly in climate related research at NERC and in storm modelling at Newcastle University, before turning to journalism. She worked for the BBC World Service for twenty years as an international news presenter, editor, producer and reporter.

She won the RSL Giles St Aubyn Award 2020 and was shortlisted for the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writers Award 2021 for Soundings, her first book.

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All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett

Motherhood, Loss and an Apothecary Garden

I loved this book, a kind of hybrid memoir that combined a passion for herbal folklore and a creative project, the building of an apothecary garden in a location where there were many obstacles to overcome, environmental and human, while exploring and healing from the loss of a loved one.

It reminded me a little of the experience of reading Helen Macdonald’s H is For Hawk, another memoir where the author takes on challenging project while navigating the tumultuous waves of grief – in that case, training a goshawk.

grief nature writing memoir motherhood loss apothecary garden

The memoir began at a moment in the author’s life when there was an unexpected death in the family; grief and coping with it, learning how to manage its lingering presence, is one of the themes she reflects on throughout the book.

At the time of this initial event, she is pregnant with her first child and as the story continues, her son becomes as much a part of the narrative as the author herself.

Victoria Bennett grew up in a large family, one that due to her father’s career, relocated countries often, that fragmented when some of the children were sent to boarding school, and even when they did settle down, did not partake in community life. They were self contained.

Used to living in places where they were outsiders, it became a way of being, even in their country of origin, England. In a conservative rural community, her mother wore hot-pants and homemade kaftans, had an art studio in the shed and had once offered to liven up a craft show with an exhibition of nudes.

Due to circumstance, Bennett and her husband move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria, built over what was an industrial site, a barren, rubble-filled, now rule-restricted, wasteland.

Mother and son slowly repurpose their backyard, building an apothecary garden – a construction of permaculture beauty, an appreciation of nature, an alternative education – yet encounter resistance, judgement, complaint and obstacle as subscribers to a more authoritarian rule, attempt to oppress or stamp out their initiative, unable to see the bigger picture of a more sustainable, kinder way of living in the shared world we inhabit.

wildflowers weeds apothecary garden

Photo E. BolovtsovaPexels.com

Bennett’s quest, to build an apothecary garden and educate (home-school) her son, was in part, an effort to integrate into the community, to overcome an inherited sense of not belonging, a deconditioning of learned ways. She overcomes anxiety, often lead by her son’s enthusiasm, to become more participative.

Despite her reticence, she had been raised by a feminist, ‘my mother was fierce about being fair,’ her sisters were outspoken, when Bennett discovers that her efforts to create something sustainable are being undermined by neighbours, she sets out to inform and educate them all.

“When we first moved onto the estate, the garden was a patch of newly sown grass, a thin layer of topsoil, and several metres of rock, rubble, and industrial hardcore. With no money, and only the weeds we found growing on the building site, my young son and I set out to see what we could grow. What was once a wasteland, became a haven for wildlife, and a balm for the body and soul. “

For a memoir that  navigated emotions, it had a good solid structure within which to contain the outpourings – each chapter began with a different plant, starting with the intriguing medieval, magical perception of it, including stunning yet simple black & white woodcut illustrations, the medicinal properties, a bit of folklore and where it might be found.  There followed a meandering through events, memories and reflections from Bennett’s life, that often ventured off from an aspect of the plant’s curative powers.

ALL My Wild Mothers

Photo Yan Krukau Pexels.com

Sow Thistle, Sonchus Oleraceus

Milkweed, swine thistle, turn sole, hare’s colewort, soft thistle

Hang sow thistle in the home to drive out melancholy…

Sow thistle grows abundantly on rubbish dumps, wasteland and roadsides.

All My Wild Mothers is also a reflection on motherhood, of one woman’s experience, given her own inclinations, personality and the effect of being the youngest in a family of six children. It is a celebration of the power and reward of maternal nurturing, of focusing on the development of a child according to their individual needs,

It is sensitively narrated, introspective and a tribute in particular to her sisters and her mother and a celebration of her son, for all that he teaches her, that he reflects back to her, due to the way she parents him and the way he in turn reminds her what it is to be a child, the gifts they offer having been nurtured, loved and allowed to grow into themselves authentically. He is a less conditioned mini human than most and Bennett’s articulate expression and capturing of his innocent yet profound utterances are a gift to all who read her prose.

Children can teach and remind us of so much that is simple and good in life, sadly conditioned out of us by the effect of a societal system that squashes it before it can have enough of a chance to flourish.

I absolutely loved this quiet book, that celebrates the wisdom of small children, nurtured through the early years and the symbiosis of mother and child.

Highly Recommended.

“What is grief, if not love persevering.” WandaVision

Victoria Bennett, Author

Victoria Bennet AuthorVictoria Bennett was born in Oxfordshire in 1971. A poet and author, her writing has previously received a Northern Debut Award, a Northern Promise Award, the Andrew Waterhouse Award, and has been longlisted for the Penguin WriteNow programme and the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for under-represented voices.

She founded Wild Women Press in 1999 to support rural women writers in her community, and since 2018 has curated the global Wild Woman Web project, an inclusive online space focusing on nature, connection, and creativity. When not juggling writing, full-time care, and genetic illness, she can be found where the wild weeds grow.  All My Wild Mothers is her debut memoir.

In 2022, her family made the difficult decision to leave the garden and follow a long-held dream of moving to Orkney, where they will discover anew what wildness will grow in a new soil.

Further Reading

For a Peek Inside the Garden + some of Victoria Bennett’s herbal potion recipes

N.B. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC (Advance Reader Copy) ebook provided via NetGalley.