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Book Reviewed by:A dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community - and the things that ultimately haunt us most.
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 shape our lives forever.
Bennett, who started work on The Mothers nine years ago when she was seventeen, walks a high-wire act: treading complicated story arcs, maturing characters and voice and tone with impressive panache. I can't wait to see this young author's career ripen and evolve and see what she comes up with next.
Believe the hype. Read this book. Be prepared to be floored...continued
Full Review
(762 words)
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(Reviewed by Poornima Apte).
In Brit Bennett's debut novel, the mothers are the elderly African African women who devote themselves to Upper Room, the black church in town. "If we laid all our lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself," they report.
The mothers in the book depend on the church for much of their social and spiritual activities and in turn drive the wheels of the institution, while the congregation as a whole is lead by a male pastor. This pattern, argue many in the black community, has been the case for centuries, with women forming the majority of the congregation (66-88%) and only males being in positions of authority.
There are nine historically African American denominations in the United ...
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The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place
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Angela Flournoy, author of National Book Award-finalist The Turner House
Brit Bennett is a brilliant and much-needed new voice in literature.
