Synopses & Reviews
Poignant, raw, and insightful, Jennifer Gilmore's third novel is an unforgettable story of love, family, and motherhood. With a “voice [that is] at turns wise and barbed with sharp humor” (
Vanity Fair), Gilmore lays bare the story of one couple's ardent desire for a child and their emotional journey through adoption.
Jesse and Ramon are a loving couple, but after years spent unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, they turn to adoption, relieved to think that once they navigate the bureaucratic path to parent-hood they will have a happy ending. But nothing has prepared them for the labyrinthine process — for the many training sessions and approvals; for the constant advice from friends, strangers, and “experts”; for the birthmothers who contact them but don't ultimately choose them; or even, most shockingly, for the women who call claiming they've chosen Jesse and Ramon but who turn out never to have been pregnant in the first place.
Jennifer Gilmore's eloquence about the human heart — its frailties and complexities — and her razor-sharp observations about race, class, culture, and changing family dynamics are spectacularly combined in this powerful novel. Suffused with passion and fury, The Mothers is a taut, gripping, and satisfying book that will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.
Review
"The Mothers is a searing examination of the very human desire to be that seemingly simple thing: a mother. Jennifer Gilmore explores the emotional depth and breadth of mothering with raw honesty and her signature grace." Ann Hood author of The Red Thread and The Knitting Circle
Review
"With a deft touch, lacerating humor, and a gaze at once steely and tenderhearted, Jennifer Gilmore takes us deep into the experience of maternal desire. This is a thoughtful, emotionally resonant and intimate novel." Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion and Slow Motion
Review
"Motherhood, like all great topics for a novel, can overwhelm. It's a massive subject with many aspects; how to even approach it? Jennifer Gilmore jumps in, beautifully, in The Mothers, which explores the deep and plangent desire for a child, but also takes on the epic state of contemporary motherhood itself: its status, its limitations, its pleasures and sorrows, and the fantasies that inevitably surround it. This well-observed exploration of maternity both day-to-day and existential has the ache of longing at its heart, and the result is both broad and personal, and always engaging.” Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings and The Ten-Year Nap
Review
“I couldn't stop reading it — it had the harrowing qualities of a psychological thriller, the comedy of a familiar Jewish family, and was alternately hysterically funny and heartbreaking. It is down to the bone stripped-bare honest.” A.M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven and The Mistress's Daughter
Review
“Heartfelt….Though often painful to read, this candid account at once embraces ‘the possibility for anything’.” Publishers Weekly
Review
“Gilmore has written a humane, realistic novel of the penetrating sorrow of people deprived by biology of their overwhelming need to be parents and of the harrowing, obstacle-riddled path to adoption.” Library Journal
Synopsis
A taut, emotionally gripping novel about one couple’s passionate desire for a child and their heartrending journey through adoption — from a critically acclaimed writer whose “voice is at turns wise and barbed with sharp humor” (
Vanity Fair).
Jesse and Ramon are a happy, loving couple but after years trying to get pregnant they turn to adoption, relieved to think that once they navigate the bureaucratic path to parenthood they will finally be able to bring a child into their family. But nothing prepared them for the labyrinthine process — for the many training sessions and approvals, for the ocean of advice, for the birth mothers who would contact them but not choose them, for the women who would call claiming that they had chosen Jesse and Ramon but weren’t really pregnant. All the while, husband and wife grapple with notions of race, class, culture, and changing family dynamics as they navigate the difficult, absurd, and often heart-breaking terrain of domestic open adoption.
Poignant, raw, and wise, Jennifer Gilmore has written a powerful and unforgettable story of love and family.
About the Author
Jennifer Gilmore is the author Golden Country, a 2006 New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Jewish Book Award, and Something Red, a New York Times Notable Book of 2010. Her work has appeared in Allure, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Vogue, and The Washington Post. She lives in Brooklyn.