WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to
prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book
lovers responded, click here.
2. What did you recently finish reading? The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy. A mommy group, organized online, starts meeting in person. In a park under a tree. They're there to support one another in this new adventure: motherhood. Sounds perfect, doesn't it?
These women all want to be perfect. They want to be the best possible mothers, and they want all the others in the group to think they have perfect babies, perfect marriages, perfect homes, and the perfect balance of family and career. Of course they don't. No woman can. But projecting perfection is important.
So when something goes horribly wrong, and one of the babies is abducted, the illusion of perfection is shattered.
This book tries to be a lot of things: paranoid thriller, commentary on the media and motherhood, a demonstration of the toxicity of secrets. I applaud the author's ambition, but I think she attempted too much. There are so many mommies in the mommy group that the archetypes distracted from the mystery.
But that's a quibble. This was, in all, a satisfying read and one of the best books I've read this year.