MOZ BLOG

I just finished Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth, and I devoured it like a jellied salmon. This story was immensely captivating, I was never quite sure what would happen next, and Hogarth used this to her advantage.

The story follows Abbigail, a woman desperate for the bond of devoted love between a mother and child, as she struggles to cope with her husband, Ralph’s, grief after losing his mother to suicide. Ralph’s mother Laura suffered pretty severe mental health issues, passed down genetically to Ralph. While Ralph and Abby made the decision to move in with Laura and support her through her mental health crisis, Abby feels as though Laura is manipulating them. On the night that Laura takes her life, Abby steals the opal wedding ring ring off of Laura’s dead finger, and buries it in the yard, hoping to save it for her future daughter.

Ralph claims that he can see Laura in the basement, and that they are able to communicate. Wracked with guilt, Abby becomes paranoid that Laura’s ghost will tattle on her to Ralph about the stolen ring. She takes the knife that Laura used to slit her wrists, carrying it around in her purse like Chekov’s gun, and tries to find a way to get rid of Laura’s ghost, and help Ralph overcome his grief, “and save her family.”

For the first four or five pages, I had assumed that the first person narrator was a man, and then when ‘he’ started talking about ‘his’ husband Ralph I thought “Oh, I didn’t know they were gay!” Unfortunately, they are not gay. I went back and reread and realized I had just made that assumption subconsciously because the prose is so violent. Abby has quite a potty mouth.

BUT the story-telling was very well done, very plot heavy. It’s definitely something you need to be paying attention to when reading. The timing was superb. Future plot points were dropped strategically throughout the beginning of the story and rounded out the ending, the way Chekov would have wanted. The climax was timed perfectly, and I’m really very picky about that! Just the right amount of conclusory material.

Highly recommend to anyone who likes weird girl fiction, any weird girls, anyone who would kill themselves for their mom, anyone who’s mom makes them want to kill themself, anyone who hates their mother-in-law, anyone who trusts only one cook book, anyone who yearns for the matrilineal connection of nurtured tradition, anyone who had a mom with icky boyfriends, anyone who works at a nursing home, anyone who likes savory Jell-O, anyone who hates to love yogurt people, anyone who feels super guilty after stealing but is kind of a klepto anyway…

Note about suicide: I actually had no problems while reading this book. I felt like the parts of suicide that are upsetting were pretty much glazed over. There really weren’t any graphic descriptions of suicide, but there was some pretty grotesque description of non-suicidal death. Proceed with caution, but I think you’ll be fine.