3.5
Mothers Don't
ByPublisher Description
A writer about to give birth investigates the story behind a mother she knows who has just killed her own twins.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities12 Reviews
3.5
Khorswe
Created about 2 hours agoShare
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“This absolutely wrecked me.”BelievableChange and growDiverse representationMemorableMorally ambiguousMultilayeredOriginalRelatableUnforgettable protagonistClever plottingGripping/excitingNonlinear narrativeSteady pacingSuspensefulWell-structuredBleakRealisticSetting fits the storyBeautifully-writtenDescriptiveFlowery/lushOriginalAbuseChild abuseChild lossDeathMurder
Kaylee Fullerton
Created 4 months agoShare
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Emma Schmidt
Created 11 months agoShare
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“Wow, this book was such an interesting read. The narrator does such an excellent job parsing out the story and explaining emotions. To be a mother is to suffer, but it is demonstrated so beautifully in this book. It’s a book that makes you feel cerebral but also insane.
Of note, I read the translation by Katie Whittemore. I feel like the translator can really change the subject and tone.”
emma_recommends
Created 12 months agoShare
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“Mothers love their children. Mothers give up their own desires to dedicate themselves to their offspring. Mothers are set apart from rest of us. And Mothers Don’t kill their children. If they do, they must be very very sick, right?
These are the presumptions that are sent into a tailspin after Alice Espanet drowns her 10 month old twins in the bathtub.
While this storyline provides a jumping off point, Mothers Don’t primarily focuses on a young reporter and author who has recently become a mother for the first time. When our unnamed protagonist and narrator realizes she briefly knew Alice, she begins an obsession with understanding why she did it, fueled by her own misgivings about motherhood.
As our narrator unlocks Alice’s backstory, a pattern begins to emerge, but still, more questions are raised than answered. This novel is intentionality provocative, meant to stir up discussions about how we view motherhood, both for ourselves and others.
Set in the Basque Country, there is an added cultural element that I felt translator Kristin Addis handled beautifully. I much preferred her translation (which I read as an ebook) to the translation I purchased in paperback.
For fans of Szilvia Molnar’s, The Nursery, and anything by Elena Ferrante. Probably not for those looking for a true crime reporter novel.
This isn’t a light read, and at times our narrator’s speculations feel deeply uncomfortable as she unpacks the quiet feelings women often suppress. Mothers Don’t invites readers into difficult discussions about motherhood in male-dominated society, the effects of feminism on the view of the mother (both prosecution and defense use it to argue their case), and humanity’s disturbing history of infanticide.”
About Katixa Agirre
Katixa Agirre (Vitoria, 1981) has a PhD in Audiovisual Communication and lectures at Universidad del País Vasco. She previously published the short story collections Sua falta zaigu and Habitat, and is the author of numerous children’s books: Paularen seigarren atzamarra, Ez naiz sirena bat, eta zer?, and Patzikuren problemak. She was also a columnist for Diario de Noticias de Álava, Deia, Aizu! and Argia.
Katie Whittemore
Katie Whittemore is graduate of the University of NH (BA), Cambridge University (M.Phil), and Middlebury College (MA), and was a 2018 Bread Loaf Translators Conference participant. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Two Lines, The Arkansas International, The Common Online, Gulf Coast Magazine Online, The Los Angeles Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and InTranslation. Current projects include novels by Spanish authors Sara Mesa, Javier Serena, Aliocha Coll, Aroa Moreno Durán, Nuria Labari, Katixa Agirre, and Juan Gómez Bárcena.
Other books by Katie Whittemore
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