The Mothers starts with two traumatic endings: a death and an abortion. The novel’s protagonist, 17-year-old Nadia, grief-stricken after her mother’s suicide, takes up with the local pastor’s son and gets pregnant. She decides to have a termination. The novel follows Nadia as she enters adulthood (“Like most girls, she’d already learned that pretty exposes you and pretty hides you”) in an African American community in a Californian military town.
Brit Bennett perceptively portrays the impact Nadia’s choice has on her life and relationships, focusing on her friendship with another motherless girl, Aubrey. Her decision to put abortion front and centre in the story is in itself extraordinary, given how absent it is in cultural narratives about young women, but she doesn’t linger on it, nor does she judge her characters. She is much more interested in what happens afterwards.
The Mothers is a beautiful and precise portrayal of female friendship, first loves and societal expectations of black women. Bennett breaks the stereotype of absent African-American fathers, removing mothers from the picture instead. Written between her own high-school years and her mid-20s, it presents Bennett as an exceptionally promising new voice in American fiction.
The Mothers is published by Riverhead (£11.99). Click here to order a copy for £9.83
