What We Thought:
“Today is the first day of the trial of the man – well, boy, really – accused of the murder of our son and, as a result, instead of a regular cup of tea on the bedside table, it is a steaming act of phenomenal cowardice and I will not touch or drink it.”
Just this sentence at the end of the opening paragraph of The Mother made me stop, gasp and read it again to savour the intense distillation of emotion it represented.
The eponymous mother’s son has been murdered, stabbed to death by a boy his own age. The novel begins on the morning of the first day of the boy’s trial, and unfolds in a few short days. But as readers we are so tightly inside the head of the mother, living every heartbeat alongside her, that time seems to slow down.
The mother has done everything in her power to keep her son safe, in a world that is full of dangers. At one point she goes over in her mind the thousand and one things she did – that every mother does – to try and keep her child safe, from teaching him to tie his shoelaces to rehearsing every detail of his first solo trip on public transport.
“I read about young people, crime, knives, gangs, guns, killings over nonsense, but they were nothing to do with the tiny safe haven I thought I’d created to insulate myself and mine.”
Despite all the mother’s care, that other world has broken through and stolen her child. In the space of a few moments, her safe haven has been ripped apart and her world has collapsed to a point of grief. What she does not expect is that, during the course of the trial, that world would begin to open up again. Her understanding and her empathy expands and with it, ours.
The Mother is about the tragedy and outrage of having a loved one’s life stolen through violence. It’s a novel, set in England and revolving around knife crime, but the mother’s story stands alongside those of the young men dead from gun violence, researched and retold by Gary Younge in Another Day in the Death of America.
It is a book of extraordinary compassion. Compassion for the victims of crime, and the different ways it can affect different members of a family. And compassion for the children growing up in a wealthy first world country, and yet living in circumstances that are closer to those of a war zone. An important read for all of us who live in safe havens and blinker ourselves to those on the outside.
“Today is the first day of the trial of the man – well, boy, really – accused of the murder of our son and, as a result, instead of a regular cup of tea on the bedside table, it is a steaming act of phenomenal cowardice and I will not touch or drink it.”
Just this sentence at the end of the opening paragraph of The Mother made me stop, gasp and read it again to savour the intense distillation of emotion it represented.
The eponymous mother’s son has been murdered, stabbed to death by a boy his own age. The novel begins on the morning of the first day of the boy’s trial, and unfolds in a few short days. But as readers we are so tightly inside the head of the mother, living every heartbeat alongside her, that time seems to slow down.
The mother has done everything in her power to keep her son safe, in a world that is full of dangers. At one point she goes over in her mind the thousand and one things she did – that every mother does – to try and keep her child safe, from teaching him to tie his shoelaces to rehearsing every detail of his first solo trip on public transport.
“I read about young people, crime, knives, gangs, guns, killings over nonsense, but they were nothing to do with the tiny safe haven I thought I’d created to insulate myself and mine.”
Despite all the mother’s care, that other world has broken through and stolen her child. In the space of a few moments, her safe haven has been ripped apart and her world has collapsed to a point of grief. What she does not expect is that, during the course of the trial, that world would begin to open up again. Her understanding and her empathy expands and with it, ours.
The Mother is about the tragedy and outrage of having a loved one’s life stolen through violence. It’s a novel, set in England and revolving around knife crime, but the mother’s story stands alongside those of the young men dead from gun violence, researched and retold by Gary Younge in Another Day in the Death of America.
It is a book of extraordinary compassion. Compassion for the victims of crime, and the different ways it can affect different members of a family. And compassion for the children growing up in a wealthy first world country, and yet living in circumstances that are closer to those of a war zone. An important read for all of us who live in safe havens and blinker ourselves to those on the outside.
You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge, Unless by Carol Shields, A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards
Avoid If You Dislike: Intimate portraits of the aftermath of violent crime
Perfect Accompaniment: Strong English Breakfast tea
Genre: Literary Fiction, Grip Lit
Available on Amazon
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