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

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Martha and Willow are both dealing with their own secrets too. Relationships that appear to be wonderful on the outside can be very dark and damaging behind closed doors and keeping up cheery appearances when the one thing you long for isn’t happening can be exhausting. A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of her self. And mothers are their daughters' role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.”

Mothers and Daughters The 18 Best Novels about Bonds Between Mothers and Daughters

This was a captivating story that I really enjoyed. It’s my first read from James and I hope it won’t be my last, because this book was such a good novel. I liked James’ story-telling, exploring the connections between three women that goes beyond just being mother and daughter.Fight Night is set in Toronto, where a preternaturally wise and precocious 9-year old girl, Swiv, is parenting her pregnant mother and her loveably outgoing and outspoken grandmother. The novel is written in the form of an extended letter to Swiv’s father, who has gone missing with no word of goodbye. The three women, and “Gord,” the unborn child, are left to fend for themselves. Which they do with wit, anger, good humor and plain old stubbornness. When Naomi bumped into Ellis, a man she’d known through university, their rekindling of friendship was immediate. He’d moved into a cottage next door to Naomi to be nearer his mother who was in care and not expected to last much longer. Naomi and Ellis found they enjoyed one another’s company, laughing and reminiscing over the past. But Martha – especially Martha – wasn’t happy to see this new man in her mother’s life. It was too soon in her opinion, although Tom tried to temper her irritation. As emotions ran hot, and tempers flared, the discomfort which ran through the family was damaging. What would be the outcome for this family – this mother and her daughters? Would things right themselves; would they make their peace with one another? This is the story of how one young woman faces the world without a mother who was absent too much even when she was alive. And how a writer perseveres and finds her voice despite the weight of student loans, no health insurance, narcissistic lovers and daily toil as a restaurant waitress in a wealthy town. The imagery is beautiful, and the details have the raw clank of truth. With an insatiable appetite for other people's business, Erica James will readily strike up conversation with strangers in the hope of unearthing a useful gem for her writing. She finds it the best way to write authentic characters for her novels, although her two grown-up sons claim they will never recover from a childhood spent in a perpetual state of embarrassment at their mother's compulsion. Vanessa is a writer, reader and generally bookish Latina from San Diego. If loving Agatha Christie is wrong, she doesn't want to be right. Vanessa’s penchant for books, travel and tea is rivaled only by her serious addictions to milk, avocado and floral lattes. When not reading books or selling them, she can be found blogging, working on her first novel or cozying up at a library.

7 Unforgettable Books About Mothers and Daughters 7 Unforgettable Books About Mothers and Daughters

Whilst the three women share a very close relationship, there are things that are kept hidden, especially by Naomi. Her daughters would like her to sell up and move to London to be near them. Naomi hasn’t told them about Ellis; a long-lost friend who has recently moved in next door and is fast becoming much more than just a friend. Instead we get a collaboration of stories featuring, Mothers & Daughters, Fathers & Daughters, and Mothers & Sons, and then a brief section on Miracles & Mothers. In what may be the most personal of the great Maya Angelou’s works, Angelou sheds light on her complicated relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter. She begins with Vivian’s decision to send three-year-old Maya and her brother to live with their grandmother in Arkansas. She goes on to explore the sense of abandonment that followed her for years.Her long road to healing began with their reunion a decade later. Paula by Isabel Allende Jenna Metcalfe has been searching for her mother for years since her mysterious disappearance; she simply vanished in the wake of a tragic accident at the elephant sanctuary where she’d been studying the majestic creatures. Jenna doesn’t believe for one second that her mother would choose to abandon her. She hires a psychic and a private detective to try and piece together what really happened. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout It’s easier for me to make sense of it that way than it is for me to face the other way—reality. And yet, those evil spirits that were unleashed—be they fake entities from a stupid carnival ride, or cruel malevolencies from dark spiritual chasms of our universe—have stayed with me all these years”Divide Me By Zero is one of the best evocations of the experience of losing a mother to illness that we’ve read in quite a long time. The protagonist is frequently told that she behaves like a child, despite being a middle-aged mother of her own daughter. There are many twists and turns that take us from Russia to Queens and then to the suburbs of New York City. But the beating heart is the devotion that this mother-daughter pair share – and the duty of such a daughter when her mother’s time has come. A lot of difficult issues are handled in a very sensitive way throughout this novel. Introducing new members into an established family can sometimes cause fractions and difficulties I thought this was brilliantly explored in the book. Family, sibling rivalry, fertility, infidelity, domestic violence, narcissism and finding happiness were a few of the subjects which were intertwined throughout the story. A glorious read from one of my favourite authors, Erica James. Her stories are always very substantial reads and Mothers and Daughters was no exception. Set in the English village of Tilsham near Chichester, Sussex, this was a family drama style story and it had the usual depth that I have come to associate with the author's superb writing. The tale fired my imagination as I knew that it would and there was certainly never a dull or boring moment. The characters were all well-drawn and most were very relatable and likeable, though a few were not, however, they all had a valuable contribution to make to the story. Mothers and Daughters had it all, from families, friendship and trust to conflict, domestic abuse, control and secrets. Highly recommended and well worth five stars!