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The Mothers

A Novel

by Brit Bennett

Narrator Adenrele Ojo

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Length 9 hours 54 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“The 'mothers' of this book's title refers to the gaggle of elderly churchgoing women who comment on the congregation around them, especially the trio of Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey. But The Mothers is about more than that -- it refers to the concept of motherhood, whether biological, lost, aborted, adoptive, or conflicted. The three young people at the heart of this story are all flawed, but their portrayals are realistic and they are easy for readers to support. This is a book about salvation -- not the spiritual salvation that the gossiping, but well-intentioned mothers seek, but the kind that comes with self-acceptance and growth. The Mothers is an honest, modern, and triumphant book.”
— Jamie Thomas • Women & Children First

Summary
About the author

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Bittersweet, sexy, morally fraught.” –The New York Times Book Review

"Fantastic… a book that feels alive on the page." –The Washington Post

From the New York-Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half, the beloved novel about young love and a big secret in a small community.

Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret.

"All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season."

It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance—and the subsequent cover-up—will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt.

In entrancing, lyrical prose, The Mothers asks whether a "what if" can be more powerful than an experience itself. If, as time passes, we must always live in servitude to the decisions of our younger selves, to the communities that have parented us, and to the decisions we make that shape our lives forever.

Fiction Fiction - Literary

Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. She is one of the National Book Foundation's 2016 5 Under 35 honorees.

Audiobook details

Author Brit Bennett

Narrator Adenrele Ojo

ISBN 9780735288263

Length 9 hours 54 minutes

Language English

Publisher Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group

Publication date October 11, 2016

Edition Unabridged

Genres Fiction & Fiction - Literary

Libro.fm rank #690 Overall

Genre rank #144 in Fiction - Literary

Reviews

"Brit Bennett is the real thing. The Mothers is a stellar novel — moving, thoughtful. Stunning. I couldn’t put it down. I’m so excited to have this brilliant new voice in the world." –Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming and Another Brooklyn

"Brit Bennett's masterful debut is brimming with unforgettable scenes and the sort of keenly-observed, precise language that makes you look at your own relationships anew. Told with the wisdom of a seasoned, compassionate storyteller, The Mothers is a novel about community, friendship, grief and growth. The two women at the center of this novel are characters you will find yourself thinking about long after you've turned the last page-- they pull you in close and never let you go. Bennett is a brilliant and much-needed new voice in literature." –Angela Flournoy, author of National Book Award-finalist The Turner House

"Brit Bennett’s The Mothers is a brilliant exploration of friendship, desire, inheritance, the love we seek, and the love we settle for. It is the kind of book that from its first page seduces you into knowing that the heartbreak coming will be worth it." –Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

"Brit Bennett’s The Mothers is an engaging and assured debut novel of depth, and introspective power. It succeeds as a brilliant study of a modern black woman, and as a lyrical and majestic portrait of her place in society." —Chigozie Obioma, author of The Fishermen

“Brit Bennett is so bracingly talented on the page. . . [The Mothers is] astute and absorbing and urgent.” —Jezebel

“This book is something special: sage and sad and spectacular. This is a book about how the choices you make, and those made for you, shape the lovely, hopeful tragedy of your life.” —Bookriot

“A wise and sad coming-of-age story showing how people are shaped by their losses.” —Kirkus Expand reviews