Saturday, May 12, 2018

Ten books about society’s anxiety about motherhood

Carol Goodman is the critically acclaimed author of over a dozen novels, including The Lake of Dead Languages and The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family, and teaches writing and literature at the New School and SUNY New Paltz.

Goodman's latest novel is The Other Mother.

One of ten books she tagged at CrimeReads "exploring the dark undertow of maternal angst and ambivalence, and society’s collective anxiety about what it means to be a mother:"
The social pressures on mothers are on full display in Aimee Molloy’s new gripping page-turner The Perfect Mother (2018). Sympathy soon turns to mommy-shaming when photos appear of the mother out drinking on the night her baby was abducted. “A new mother,” one pundit queries, “just a few weeks postpartum, and she leaves her baby at home to act like this? Is this the definition of modern motherhood?”
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue