Review by Leila Green
A grief-stricken young woman clings to boys and secrets for far too long.
“All good secrets have a taste before you tell them.”
Nadia’s mother has committed suicide, but she won’t allow herself to break down. With the hope of feeling whole again, she looks for solace in equally broken people. She clings to Luke, a shiftless young man that attends her gossipy church, The Upper Room. She clings to Aubrey, a naïvely kind girl she meets the summer before heading to Michigan for college. That summer is the novel’s epicenter; the site from which the novel’s shock waves and ripples originate. During that summer, Nadia’s life is irreversibly changed when she chooses to abort her and Luke’s baby. It’s when she is forever forced to ask herself this question: what if? The Mothers vividly
renders a young woman coming of age amidst intense grief and life-altering love.
“What if” is the question that anchors The Mothers. It plagues Nadia’s mind and haunts each chapter. As Nadia grapples with her choices and secrets, she moves on physically. However, her mind remains stuck—almost obsessively—on the past. She wonders what would have happened if she had kept her and Luke’s child. She wonders what would happen if she and her father were closer. She wonders what her own mother’s life would
have been like if she, herself, had never been born. The Mothers is a powerful examination of generational shame. Brit Bennett nicely weaves the past with the present and forces a poignant consideration of how a single person’s choice can go on to shift the world.
Ultimately, what Brit Bennett has crafted is a comprehensive portrait of one girl’s life. The story itself feels very whole. This is mostly due to Bennett’s excellent concentration on place. Nadia’s Californian hometown, her church and each house we visit is treated with intense care and is thus rendered very uniquely. Each space has its own, particular vibe and it’s interesting to see how Nadia—a very static character—navigates each one.
Bennett’s prose is poignant and wonderfully metered, but the story itself feels immature. This is not simply because the protagonist is young. What makes the story immature is the way in which she never seems to ma-
ture. She seems to be stuck in the past; the same problems follow her for the duration of the novel. This left the story feeling circular and regressive. The characters don’t develop as richly as they can, thus compromising some
of the book’s believability.
The Mothers ultimately works because it is a reflection of the kind of gossipy, dramatic chit-chat that can go on in churches like The Upper Room. The book is a page-turner. It possesses the same magnetic quality that draws us into bouts of gossip. There is something mysteriously—perhaps sadistically—satisfying about prying into a person’s private life. While reading The Mothers, we are doing the same thing that the novel’s odd chorus of church mothers are doing: obsessively judging Nadia.