In profiles and reviews, critics have made note of the sheer normalcy of the narrative-and by normalcy, they often (with a measure self-awareness, or not) mean this-could-conceivably-happen-to-white-characters. Nadia leaves for college Aubrey and Luke stay-but their lives continue to intersect with and complicate one another’s. In the void left by that disappearance, Nadia befriends Aubrey, a church-going girl as sweet as she is steely: both young women have survived different kinds of motherlessness. Their relationship ruptures when Nadia realizes she is pregnant: Luke’s parents clandestinely pay the bill for her abortion, and Luke himself disappears from Nadia’s life. Nadia, a bright high school senior whose mother has recently committed suicide, meets Luke, the pastor’s son and former college football player whose life is on hold after a career-ending injury. You should be reading it.īennett’s debut novel traces the shifting geometry of a love triangle in a sleepy Southern California beach town. Published last week, The Mothers is finally hitting bookstores and library shelves. Named a BEA Buzz pick in June (one of six adult titles chosen by editor-panelists), this first novel has been in bookish social media feeds all summer: a galley on the beach, a hardcover in a bedside stack, a tote bearing the cover image slung over a shoulder.
This is what it looks when publishing works, when it puts resources behind a brilliant debut like Brit Bennett’s The Mothers.
If you work in, or pay close attention to, books, you’ll have seen the beautiful, color-blocked cover for months: a woman’s face in profile, segmented as if made of stained glass.
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