The Mothers by Brit Bennett

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Vladimir Nabokov’s century-old novel Mary and the futility of trying to relive the past. I didn’t plan for this next book to cover similar ground, but the obsession with memory also underpins Brit Bennett’s The Mothers, a contemporary novel set in Southern California.

Both stories hinge on a teenage love affair that echoes into adulthood. In each book, it’s clear that the past cannot be recreated. Yet The Mothers, published in 2016, is altogether different. It's a story about motherhood, friendship and grief that takes on a difficult subject – abortion – in ways that surprised me.

I chose this book because the plot intrigued me and the cover art is striking. The novel is set in a Black, churchgoing community in Oceanside, California, home to the sprawling Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base. The church and the military loom over the novel as institutions that offer structure and belonging, yet they also can be unforgiving.

The novel opens by introducing 17-year-old Nadia, who is about to graduate from high school and head to the University of Michigan. She is reeling from her mother’s suicide months earlier, while her father – a stoic former Marine – has retreated into himself. Nadia impulsively starts a romance with Luke, the son of the local church pastor. When Nadia gets pregnant, Luke’s mother secretly gives him the money for an abortion, a decision that will reshape the lives of Nadia, Luke and Nadia’s best friend, Aubrey.

I’ve read a lot of novels where unwanted pregnancies feature mainly as a plot device, but this novel is more nuanced. Bennett uses Nadia’s abortion to illuminate the pressures within a community where ending a pregnancy is treated as shameful and unspeakable. Bennett does not pass judgment; instead, she focuses on the lasting impact of a decision made rashly and secretly. The book’s greatest strength is in its finely observed characters. Bennett writes with compassion toward people who hurt and betray one another, without offering excuses for them.

"The Mothers" by Brit Bennett had a lot more in common with Vladimir Nabokov's "Mary" than I would have expected.

The Mothers employs an inventive narrative technique. It tells the story through the point of view of each main character, as well as through a group of “mothers” from the church who play the role of an all-knowing Greek chorus. These women watch, gossip and moralize. Their collective voice can be sharp and funny, yet also mean and uncharitable.

Christianity plays a central role in the lives of these characters. Nadia has grown up going to church yet never feels at home there. Aubrey, by contrast, finds in faith the solace and structure that her childhood lacked. For Luke, as a pastor’s son, religion is both an inheritance and a burden that he cannot escape.

One of the most compelling aspects of the novel is the impact of Nadia’s abortion on Luke. Like Nadia, Luke is defined by loss, though it takes him years to recognize and name it. Before he meets Nadia, he suffers a football injury that derails his ambitions of athletic stardom and leaves him adrift; the loss of his unborn child creates a much deeper void.

As the title suggests, the plot is crowded with mothers: dead mothers, bad mothers, overbearing mothers and would-be mothers. It is also concerned with the idea of motherhood itself, and what it means when this identity is absent, renounced or not possible.

Near the end of the story, the chorus of mothers makes a devastating observation: one child exists solely because another child does not. It sums up what I found to be, ultimately, a deeply sad book: choices made cannot be undone, and no one emerges untouched.