Mothers and Daughters: From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a captivating family drama

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Perhaps because Naomi is presented as so caring and selfless, in contrast to Willow and Martha’s sometimes selfish or erratic behaviours. Making sense of these relationships can be challenging and upsetting, rewarding and fulfilling, all at once. Two of these characters are Carole and Bummi, a mother-daughter duo with different ideas about life. Nancy Wilson describes the joys that come as mothers and daughters grow as sisters in the Lord, encouraging one another to embrace biblical femininity. Parent memoirs have become so common that we may fail to appreciate the challenge that the novelists Elizabeth McCracken (the author of witty novels and stories and a heartbreaking memoir about a stillborn son) and Lynne Tillman (an edgy, cerebral novelist and critic) took on in their recent books.

When my mother died in 2018, my grief was compounded by how much I didn’t know about my mother, of my mother, and when I had a daughter in 2002, I knew I wanted my daughter to know me, the girl I had been, the young woman I missed, yet often regretted, and the woman I am, as me, as Jill, the woman beyond her mother. The Bible speaks of uncovering parents’ nakedness, that is, dishonoring them, usually through a disgraceful sexual act; it can be a capital offense. This is an easy to read, warm-hearted family saga and although I found it difficult to accept how quickly some of the conflicts were resolved, as the essence of the resolutions felt credible I was, for the most part, able to set aside my doubts and believe in the fresh beginnings promised for the characters.

Early in the novel, Miranda explains: “[I]t’s because I never had a father that I don’t want one now. The essays that I began writing in the fall of that year, November, appeared in column in The Paris Review Daily, and they ran each season, each Friday in November, January, March, and August. Willow, the youngest, was always more sunny and easy-going, yet drifted through life, much to her father’s frustration. After a few more moments of hiking, Strayed thinks, Fuck her, a new layer of grief, this time at what her mother’s early death took away from Strayed—the chance to grow up and “confront her about the things I wished she’d done differently and then grow older and understand that she had done the best that she could. She’s found an elegant way to show us those more fraught emotions: a housecleaning scene that evokes— intentionally, I think—the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle.

When Bee’s beloved mother Bernadette disappears, the family will find themselves in a crisis that is at both turns hilarious and dramatic.Here are some of our favorite mother-daughter books, along with why we think they’re perfect to read this Mother’s Day. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk—and the Joy Luck Club is born. I wasn’t too fussed on Martha to start with, but she grew on me – Willow was a delight, although she let herself be walked over. Sometimes the daughter lays on the forgiveness so thick that we have the urge to scrape it off to see if we can get at the more problematic feelings that are surely underneath.