For example, Elise is regarded as a doting wife and mother, while her daughter is a studious, obedient child. In The Mothers, women’s intimate decisions drive the novel’s action and conflict, partly because they contradict the community’s perceptions. Instead, The Mothers is as much about the banality of growing up in a California that is not San Francisco or Los Angeles as it is about characters’ choices. Important to the novel is Bennett’s rejection of a stereotypical setting. Bennett’s specific focus, however, on the millennial generation, who have “never lived outside California, never gone on exciting vacations, never left the country,” provides the reader with a different, contemporary perspective (70). As in Walter Moseley’s southern California, Bennett’s adult African American characters all come from somewhere else.
The networks in the community are connected through the church, which serves as a place of refuge and a meeting place for new residents.īennett masterfully blends the messiness of older gossiping “church folk” with origin stories that hint at California’s promise as “paradise” for one and all. Many have newly relocated to the area because of the nearby military base (Camp Pendleton), and others, like the families central to the novel, have been residents for several decades, attracted to stability and social freedom. Bennett depicts Oceanside as populated with diverse working-and middle-class families. Bennett taps into the lives and experiences of a group normally overlooked in American fiction-the conservative, middle-class Black western community. And this is where the author proves her brilliance. While the narrative focuses largely on Nadia Turner’s life, we learn from the book’s opening lines that this story is not only Nadia’s to tell. However, while sorting through the various parts of her life she makes a personal decision that affects everyone around her, long after she has departed for college. During this time she clings to peers who give her much-needed romantic attention (Luke Sheppard) and friendship (Aubrey Evans). Nadia is left to pick up the pieces on her own and prepare to enter college in Michigan. Her mother, Elise, recently committed suicide for unknown reasons, and to numb the pain her father immerses himself in the church community. Nadia is smart, beautiful, determined, but emotionally troubled.
On the surface, the novel is about Nadia Turner, a high school senior growing up in Oceanside. Like many examples of contemporary fiction involving youth, the narrative rests on intrigue, staccato dialogue, troubled characters (some more developed than others), toxic romantic relationships, and oblivious adults. Brit Bennett’s debut novel, The Mothers, is a compelling story that draws the reader into the world of a tight-knit community in coastal California.
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