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Fiction. Literature. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ??Bittersweet, sexy, morally fraught.? ??The New York Times Book Review"Fantastic? a book that feels alive on the page." ??The Washington Post From the New York-Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half, the beloved novel about young love and a big secret in a small community. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "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." It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance??and the subsequent cover-up??will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt. In entrancing, lyrical prose, The Mothers asks whether a "what if" can be more powerful than an experience itself. If, as time passes, we must always live in servitude to the decisions of our younger selves, to the communities that have parented us, and to the decisions we make that sha… (more)
User reviews
I really liked this book. First off, it is incredibly well written. It was such an easy read. Some books I find myself slogging through but I didn't with this book. Everything just flowed nicely and it was effortless to
The characters felt very real and dynamic. The author did a good job giving everyone's perspective.
I loved the setting of San Diego and how it was incorporated.
As for the abortion element, I thought it was handled well. I didn't take any issue with it.
A little random but one of my favorite quotes was, "A girl's first time was supposed to hurt. Suffering pain is what made you a woman. Most of the milestones in a woman's life were accompanied by pain, like her first time having sex or birthing a child. For men, it was all orgasms and champagne" (210). As soon as I read that I was like, Ain't that the truth!
Overall, I was really impressed by this. It was an amazing debut novel.
Does it sound excruciatingly Oprah-esque? There are touches of that, but the writing is good and the characterizations are mostly subtle. Besides the flawed and troubled mothers described in the story, the other "mothers" are a group of African American church ladies who act as a sort of Greek chorus commenting on the action in the book. I'm not sure those mothers added much to the work, but I may need another read-through before I decide.
I liked Nadia because of her prickly independence and in spite of some poor decisions. I was a little put off by the emphasis on her abortion remorse, because while I know that some women feel that way, I also know that many women don't, and the lie that women are psychologically harmed by abortion is used against us by anti-choice forces.
Recently, there has been a plethora of books about some current social issue facing us all. This one is no different, in that regard. Human sexuality, morality and racial issues take the stage at various moments in the narrative. However, the
The novel takes place in Oceanside, California and concerns a tight knit black community that revolves around the church of Pastor Sheppard. The Upper Room Chapel in the church is where the mothers gather, and the volunteers come, in order to help those less fortunate. There, the mothers communed with each other, overseeing the behavior of their neighbors and congregants, gossiping about the news they had overheard, possibly third hand, and then created their own rumors that were often disproved later on, but also often presented dangerous consequences because they led to misconceptions and false judgments about possibly innocent victims. These mothers who did lots of good for their church brethren, remembered being young, and they lamented the changes that had occurred over the years regarding personal, responsible behavior. There were do’s and don’ts that were once followed carefully by all of them, when they were young, but that seemed, to them, to be irrelevant today.
When Nadia Turner’s mother committed suicide, she was left adrift in a void that her father was unable to fill. She looked for comfort from the pastor’s son, Luke Sheppard. When she discovered she was pregnant, she realized she did not want the baby. She had big plans for her future. She had been accepted to the University of Michigan, and she envisioned a different life for herself than that of motherhood at age 17. Luke, although he was older and should have been wiser, went along with her wishes. He had an image to uphold as the pastor’s son. He obtained the money for her to have an abortion, but then he stood her up at the abortion clinic, not picking her up after the procedure. Alone, she faced the trauma and realized how foolish she had been. The secret of that abortion was kept for many years, but both Luke and Nadia carried their heartbreak with them into the future. They were both scarred by the event, and the future held grave consequences for both of them.
When the pastor offered to give Nadia a job so she could have some spending money when she went off to college, her father readily agreed. She began to work for the pastor’s wife, a very self-righteous woman who did not approve of Nadia. At the church, she became friendly with Aubrey, a young quiet, girl who had no friends. Aubrey volunteered in the Upper Room and kept to herself. Both young girls were outcasts in their own way, and they grew close in a friendship that spanned distance and time until the day that many secrets and betrayals came to light causing a rift between them.
Aubrey lived with her sister and her sister’s partner. Both women tried to help and to guide her when she came to live with them. After being raped repeatedly by her mother’s boyfriend, she was skittish around men and avoided social situations. Aubrey was kind and compassionate, however, and rarely resentful. She tended to appreciate what she had and wanted to help others. Nadia was different. She felt that her mother had abandoned her, and so too, had Luke. She often resented her father’s inattention to her, and never appreciated the little kindnesses he did attempt to show. Luke carried the responsibility of being the pastor’s son on his shoulders. He had been the recipient of a full football scholarship to college, but after he was injured, it was rescinded. Both Nadia and Luke seemed to address and satisfy their own needs first, often without thinking about consequences. They didn’t accept responsibility for the results of their actions. Aubrey, on the other hand was respected as a quiet, kind and responsible young girl who responded kindly to the needs of others. So, the story is essentially about the relationships between Nadia and Luke, Nadia and Aubrey, and Aubrey and Luke. Hovering over them, like a shadow, were the mothers that observed and noted the goings-on in the community, responded to those in need, but also judged and buzzed with their gossip, often influencing behavior with detrimental results.
As the details of the lives of Nadia, Luke and Aubrey were explored, the story took shape. The reader watched as Nadia matured, Aubrey overcame her fears, and Luke became a more responsible man. They each had scores to settle or learn to accept. Their sometimes self-destructive behavior and interactions with each other were examined, in detail, by the author, as was their own self- examination as they recognized and attempted to correct their shortcomings, repent for their sins, accept what they could not change, deal with their painful memories, and apologize for their mistakes. The reader is a voyeur as they move on with their lives, each in their own way.
The author wove threads of her life throughout the novel, a novel that was read well, with appropriate accents, expression and emphasis by the narrator Adenrele Ojo.
***These are several different themes addressed in the book which would make for interesting book group discussions:
1-Nadia’s mother abandoned her when she committed suicide. Nadia was angry about how her life had turned out, unexpectedly.
2-Aubrey’s mom neglected her and allowed her to be sexually abused. She was sad and hurt and went to live with her sister and her sister's partner who gave her a more wholesome environment.
3-Luke’s mother expected him to behave properly but he was wayward and willful, even though he was a pastor's son. His parents protected and guarded his image.
4-The mothers congregating in The Upper Room Chapel were nostalgic about their pasts as they observed the young people and how things had changed.
5-Interracial relationships were accepted and were easy-going and natural.
6-The conflict between becoming a mother and/or getting an education took center stage allowing for a discussion on the subject of abortion.
7-Each of the mothers approached life and their family in different ways.
8-Each of the young adults dealt with their disappointments in life differently and grew in their own individual way as they faced their problems.
This is a book that had me stopping every few pages to capture quotes. This is a strong story, but it was the writing that really won me over. Here's a few quotes:
"Black boys couldn't afford to be reckless, she had tried to tell him. Reckless white boys became politicians and bankers, reckless black boys became dead." p. 60
"A soft death can be swallowed with Called home to be with the Lord or We'll see her again in glory, but hard deaths get caught in the teeth like gristle." p.64
"Maybe she'd never really known her mother at all. And if you couldn't know the person whose body was your first home, then who could you ever know?" p.67
"Strangers often mistook them for sisters or cousins or even, Aubrey assumed, girlfriends. She was amazed by their ability to resemble each other, to become family, to occupy, at once, different ways to love each other." p.218
I belong to a subscription service called Quarterly and every three months an author curates the box. Brit Bennett was the curator for this box and she included personal notes on stickiest, placed in various places in the book. Greatly added to my reading experience as she explains where she got some of her, some of her thoughts when writing. She based our narrators, the mothers, on the most judgmental, people she knew. If you read the book you will see what a great job she did.
I was thoroughly drawn into this story, it felt so identifiable, so realistic and so true. The mistakes we make when we are young are sometimes hard to forget, fill us with regret, a longing to go back and change things. Of course we can't, we must learn to move forward as do the three young people in this novel. Quite a touching and memorable first novel.
The Mothers are a group of long retired women, who gather together at church to work their way through prayer requests. They're nosy and gossipy, but they also care deeply for the congregants of The Upper Room church. They provide a Greek chorus to the story of Nadia, a young woman whose mother has died suddenly and who is negotiating her way through her last summer in Oceanside, California, before she leaves her almost-boyfriend, the pastor's son, and her best friend, who has also lost her mother (but for very different reasons) to go to university. What she does and doesn't tell her best friend will impact their lives for years after that summer.
The Mothers has been receiving a lot of attention and is on the long list for the Tournament of Books. It deserves the accolades it has received; they are not over-blown.
This is another one of those ‘buzz’ books I wouldn’t ordinarily read, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I checked it out of the library, just to see for myself why the book garnered such high praise.
The ‘Mothers’ are
They narrate the story of Nadia, Luke, and Audrey, three young black people living in Southern California. Their lives interconnect during pivotal points in their young lives, forging strong emotional bonds, in the process, but the decisions made in their youth, the secrets they keep, will haunt them all through their adult lives.
The story is very emotional, the characters filled with a deep longing, regret, and desire. The reader is like a spectator as the characters live through life’s ups and downs, make life altering choices, experience love, friendship, betrayal, and cope with the consequences. Life is not a fairy tale and this story demonstrates how, despite our best efforts, life throws us curve balls that upend all our good intentions, sending us off in directions we never envisioned.
This is not a resolvable, wrapped up in a nice neat little bow, happily ever after type novel. It's a sad story, but one that describes life and the repercussions of our decisions. The writing is sharp, but, deep character analysis is minimal. I felt like, instead of reading, I was watching all this on television or something, or like I was on the outside looking in. The inner thoughts of the characters are not prevalent, which is something I wished for.
Still, I do appreciate that this is a debut novel, and the author certainly has some writing chops. I think if the characters had been fleshed out a bit more, and if the ending hadn’t been quite so abrupt, I would have enjoyed the book a little more. But, I do see why the story, with its contemporary setting, its boldness, the contrasts of religion with difficult topics, like abortion, resonates with readers.
Overall, this is an impressive debut, and I am glad I gave the book a try. Brit Bennett is definitely an author to keep an eye on.
The eponymous Mothers, a group of church ladies who see and know all, appear regularly with their commentary on the situation. But they are not the only mothers: Luke's mother plays a pivotal role, and as Nadia matures she often imagines what life would have been like had she given birth, and many cannot be mentioned without spoilers.
This was a well-crafted debut novel that explored some interesting themes. It didn't quite live up to the hype but was still a good read.
This is a story of three young people and how their decisions in youth follow them throughout their lives. It is refreshingly NOT set in New York, but instead Oceanside, CA. "The Mothers" are the female church elders and their collective voice guides us through the
Another mother connection, is the relationship between Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey and their own mothers. I would have liked to explore those relationships a bit more. While they each have their problems with their mothers, some of that is not as in depth as I would have liked (Nadia's mother's choice, for example).
Overall, it was the dynamics between the three main characters that kept me reading. Once the relationship between Nadia and Aubrey blossomed, I was hooked.
I'm a strange person who is often wary of reading hyped books, so I put off reading this novel for a while. And I certainly did enjoy it; I can't say that I didn't. I basically read it in one day, and I was very much drawn into the story. While Bennett focuses her story on Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey, she also employs a "Greek chorus" of sorts, composed of "the mothers"--the female elders from the church--who tell the story of Nadia from their third person point of view. It's a different sort of method to employ, but Bennett pulls it off. Still, for me, I found a lot of this novel predictable, and I never really became completely attached to any of the characters. What I did enjoy is how much of the tale is rooted in the bits of life that can drag us all down. It some ways, it very well details the mundane aspects of life - making them seem interesting and nuanced. We basically see the entire span of Nadia's life, which was compelling. However, while there is a depth and message to some of Bennett's story, I can't see it sticking with me for the long-term.
Overall, this is well-written novel and certainly worth picking up. Did I find it worth all the hype? Probably not. But I'm no doubt a bit more cynical than most. It's still an intriguing story that I enjoyed reading.
I was engaged for most of it but the third-person gossipy commentary by "the Mothers" of the
This novel has gotten a lot of praise, and I think it's well-earned. The characters are well-drawn and believable, and situations that could easily have been melodramatic are instead handled with a light, deft touch. It also handles its touchy subject matter very well; there's no preachy authorial moralizing about abortion here, although the characters themselves are certainly allowed to have their own opinions. And I really like the writing. Bennett is capable of crafting a stunningly vivid and insightful turn of phrase when one is needed, and the rest of the time she just gives us beautifully clean prose that's smart enough to stay out of its own way. She also does some interesting things with POV that I wouldn't have expected to work anywhere near as smoothly as they do.
Nadia is the most brilliant of the kids at church, and destined for law school. When her
Reminded me of church mothers everywhere. They’ve been through it all before – you’d be better off if you just listened to them in the first place.
Enjoyed!
Luke is the preacher's son whose football career is ended by a serious leg injury. Nadia and Luke