listen to the mothers

Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult

Rating: 4.25 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: If Jodi Picoult is the only author I would have trusted to write about the COVID-19 pandemic when we were still coming out of it (and she is), then I also trust her to write about the September 11 attacks with care and sensitivity (and she does).  But this book is about much more than September 11, and in some ways isn't actually about that day at all, although it provides a necessary backdrop for the story.  This book is really about motherhood, friendship, and postpartum psychosis, and perhaps, by putting all of that together, Picoult has taken on a bit too much.  If this were a book by anyone else, I would say that it was definitely too much.  So the book drags a bit in the middle and towards the end, and one character is perhaps dragged off the stage too abruptly, but this is still Picoult, if not at her finest.  You will learn something from this book (probably lots of things), find yourself thinking about something in a different light (probably lots of different lights), and have all the feels (probably at once).

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

both sides of the story

The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: This is the story of two women, two mothers. Thea lives in the house where she grew up and is the stay-at-home mom of 3 kids, including a toddler. Amanda, a children's book editor, moves in next door, pregnant, about to start her maternity leave. When circumstances force the two women uncomfortably close, each must face her own choices to stay home or continue to work.

The best thing about this book is that Gross alternates chapters between Thea and Amanda, allowing the reader to get both sides of the story. To each mother, the other is a monster, but both have moments of being able to put themselves in the other's shoes.

The worst thing about this book is that Gross chooses to use the events of September, 2001 to bring her story to a close. The story starts in September, 2000 when Amanda moves in to her new house. The book is divided into sections by the months that follow, with no mention of year, until the following September when the inclusion of 2001 is glaring and obvious. Without going into detail, Gross gets her characters home safely and ends her story quite abruptly.

Gross's decision to use September 11th in this way is a shame because up until the last section this was a very engaging book. I cared about the characters and wanted them to be friends or at least come to terms separately with their own decisions. But it feels as though Gross could not figure out how to make that happen and decided to take the easy way out.

knowing the unknowable

Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: This book is built around Elizabeth's search to find the truth about what happened to April, her first grade friend who disappeared from school one day. At the time, Elizabeth couldn't get an explanation from her teacher, and her mother was too busy with a new baby and her own issues to really notice that Elizabeth's friend was gone. The truth of what happened isn't too hard for Elizabeth to find out as an adult. After all, when a mother kills herself and her two daughters, there are newspapers articles, which Elizabeth is easily able to find. But it turns out that her search is really to know the unknowable: why did April's mother do this seemingly unthinkable thing?

On a quest to try to answer this question, Elizabeth confronts issues of postpartum depression, especially in the early 1970s, before it was recognized as a treatable condition, and the common prescription of Valium to help women who were depressed, whether it actually benefited them or not. Although Kogan gets a bit heavy-handed on these subjects, her characters are well-drawn and believable.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

feminism and choices

The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: Chapters in this novel alternate between the modern-day lives of a group of women in New York City, all of whom have left careers behind to raise their children, and stories of their mothers or other women from an earlier generation, all of whom are feminists in their own way.

Wolitzer is telling us two things, I think. First, by contrasting the lives of mothers in the 1960s and '70s with those of their daughters in the late '90s and early 21st century, Wolitzer asks questions about what happened to the feminism that the earlier generation fought for. Is it lost because the next generation chose not to take advantage of it, or is it preserved because each woman has the choice, within her own family circumstances, of whether to work or not, and is not pushed into the role of stay-at-home-mom, merely because that's what is "done"?

And by looking at the lives of women who have been out of the workforce for about 10 years, she is able to describe the rewards as well as the drawbacks to that choice for different women. Wolitzer is not shy about describing either. Some of her characters feel incredibly rewarded by being able to stay home with their children, others are more ambivalent. Some continually toy with the idea of going back to work, while one is eventually forced to go back to work because of financial issues.

Although this novel sometimes reads as a series of vignettes or even interviews, Wolitzer brings it all together for a satisfying conclusion. Wolitzer looks at each character and each situation in a thoughtful way. This book is never preachy or judgmental, but is a gently told story about characters who are each sympathetic in their own way.