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The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Literary fiction

The Mothers

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Brit Bennett, on your first book!

by Brit Bennett

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Quick take

Brit Bennett's words have the kind of warmth and familiarity as though the novel was a secret being told by your closest friend.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Emotional

    Emotional

  • Illustrated icon, Social_Issues

    Social issues

  • Illustrated icon, Teen

    Teens

  • Illustrated icon, Mama_Drama

    Mama drama

Synopsis

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.

Why I love it

How do I start to describe The Mothers? Visceral? Riveting? Heart-wrenching? In the end this novel is all three and then some. The Mothers opens with a chorus of a collective female voice that divulges the tragic history of beautiful Nadia Turner. Years ago, her mother, Elise, committed suicide just moments after leaving their church, and now both Nadia and her father are left to deal with Elise's "unfinished business." Nadia must make her way even as her church congregation suspects that madness has cursed the Turner family to make unwise decisions in both life and love.

The question I kept asking myself as I read the novel is how free am I from my mother's choices? How free am I from the choices I made when I was younger and will I ever have to account for them in the future? In The Mothers, the past has the presence of a character-- it moves and changes just as Nadia does. At seventeen years old, Nadia falls in love with a fellow church member and loses her virginity to him. She winds up pregnant, and chooses to have an abortion, a decision that haunts the couple for years to come. Brit Bennett's voice is consistently charged with energy and yet simultaneously, her words have the kind of warmth and familiarity as though the novel was a secret being told by your closest friend.

The Mothers is a story about black women's sexuality and cultural judgment within a black church in California, in which female virgins are considered to be more prized and favored by God than those who are not. Men are exempt from this kind of communal judgment. Each line that Bennett produces cracks open with more intensity in order to ask over and over again: What if? The past and the present converge with each blossoming subplot until you begin to wonder what "mistakes" you've made in the past that changed your future, and whether or not you will have to grapple with them. The Mothers is a rollercoaster ride that picks up very quickly even while maintaining its complexity as it moves through the interwoven journeys of Brit Bennett's unforgettable characters.

Other books by Brit Bennett

Member ratings (5,479)

Literary fiction
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The Mothers
The Water Dancer
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Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
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& Sons
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Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards
Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards