A review by in_love_with_bookish
The Mothers by Brit Bennett

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

 
An inside hurt was supposed to stay inside. How strange it must be to hurt in an outside way you couldn’t hide


This book destroyed me and I never saw it coming. I expected it to be good but not this good and I didn’t expect it to rip my heart out and challenge my feelings so strongly and so deeply. The moment I closed the book, I felt this profound loss and this wave of sadness drowning me, surrounding me and I need to read it again as soon as I recover from it.

Grief was not a line, carrying you infinitely further from loss. You never knew when you would be sling-shot backward into its grip.


The book takes place in a black community in Southern California and it tells the story of three characters linked together with secrets, regrets, and what-ifs; Nadia Turner, a 17 years old girl grieving her mother suicide and struggling with her complex relationship with her dad, Luke Sheppard, a 21 years old pastor’s son whose injury took away his dream of being a football star and just reduced him to waiting tables and the best friend, Audrey who develop a profound bond with the other two characters. The story follows these three characters as they grow up and grow apart only to go back and find each other again and then drift apart once more from what they are to each other.

The Mothers is definitely a character-driven story and the author was brilliant at creating flawed memorable characters with stories that left me with emotional scars but also with hope and beauty. Although the focus was on the characters, the execution of the plot was wonderful. I was captivated, in awe, and shocked to my core by how great and touching the story was.

It was strange learning the contours of another’s loneliness. You could never know it all at once; like stepping inside a dark cave, you felt along the walls, bumped into jagged edges.


The story is written beautifully, it’s poignant, uncomfortable, and raw. It is a coming of age story, it’s a tragic love triangle, it’s a community voice and it’s an intimate portrayal of grief, regret, and the allure of the past and all its possibilities.

The characters are vivid and real, their complexity is unsettling but Oh So engaging and fascinating. Their struggles and fears and secrets are striking and their journeys as they grow up and struggle with their friendships, loves, and dreams are written in a way that left grief-stricken.

Oh girl, we have known little bit love. That little bit 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 little bit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more.


The story is told about these three characters but there is also another presence driving the story, it’s the collective voice of the mothers of that community who are outsiders to the personal lives of the three characters but also deeply aware of their pain even if it’s not totally understood. I think the choice to include that was really clever because it gave us another perspective of the story.

Nadia had always felt this pull to go back to that town that represents loss and pain for her but also she has a lust for freedom and leaving it all behind and including the voice of the mothers gave us another angle of the story and how she was seen in a community with which she has a bittersweet bond.

I really can’t recommend this book enough. It deals with a lot of heavy themes that are universally acknowledged as important and sensitive but it’s also an intimate examination of the human heart and the different kind of loves we encounter in our life, It’s a story about community, secrets, and yearning for what could’ve been: Deeply painful and wonderfully intense. I loved it to my core.

The weight of what has been lost is always heavier than what remains.
 
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