Mother’s Day: eight books about the different complexities of motherhood

At one point in her life, Aura García-Junco lost a hero and found a man. That hero was her father. The man too. That loss marked the relationship between the two, a relationship that, once her father – also a writer H. Pascal – died, the Mexican author reviews through the library that she inherited from her. “Marguerite Yourcenar said that one of the best ways to get to know someone is through her books,” writes García-Junco. And the writer insists on the goal—perhaps impossible—of getting to know her father better (and, incidentally, herself: “I was a daughter and now I no longer know what I am”) through old volumes full of dust. your library. A poetic and philosophical text that, at its core, constitutes a beautiful double love letter to books and to the ‘man-not-hero’ who was her father.

After the international success achieved with ‘The Instinct’, the Canadian writer Ashley Audrain confirms herself as queen of a new trend within the crime novel that openly approaches the darker and less traveled sides of the maternal experience. In ‘The Rumor’, Audrain once again demonstrates her knowledge of motherhood – and everything that it entails at all levels – to hook the reader from the first page with this addictive story – which, due to the socioeconomic profile of its protagonists and because of the stories that occur between them, it is reminiscent of the series ‘Big Little Lies’ – in which the accidental fall of a child from a window uncovers a whole series of betrayals and family disagreements hidden under an ‘Instagrammer’ façade of a family life. luxury and perfection. Translation by Carlos Jiménez Arribas.

At 40 years old, the same age as her father when she was born, the Argentine writer Mercedes Halfon began to write the texts that make up this book, a kind of paternal biography that, in its own way, is also a form of autobiography of the author. In a journey that continually oscillates between the present – marked by her motherhood and the conversations she has with her father – and the past – her childhood, adolescence and youth as a daughter – Halfon immerses herself in the secondary roads of memory to portray to his father and narrate a family story that transcends his intimacy to become a vehicle of recent Argentine history.

Ada d’Adamo died of cancer at the age of 55, three months before posthumously receiving the prestigious Strega prize—the highest literary award that can be won in Italy—and without being able to discover the phenomenon that her book has become ( that does not stop hoarding recognition and accumulating translations). ‘As of Air’ is a work as hard as it is beautiful, a luminous and sincere story about love and illness. The story of Ada’s daughter, who was born with a brain malformation, and that of the author herself, to whom cancer granted her “full citizenship in the country of the sick.” The ambivalence of motherhood (“Even though it has turned my life upside down, I adore my wonderful, imperfect daughter. But if I had had the choice, that day, I would have chosen therapeutic abortion”) reaches another dimension in this strangely magical autobiographical work. and beautiful that shakes the reader with the lightness and fury of the dance movements that marked D’Adamo’s life.

“There is no force in the world like that of desire. There is no greater danger in the world than a mother,” declares Nuria Valencia, one of the protagonists of this novel, in her testimony before the police. And that idea flies over the entire story that the writer Brenda Lozano tells through the voice of a narrator who is vindictive and great in her way of telling, capable of giving off irony and black humor in the middle of a dramatic situation: the disappearance of a little girl. in Mexico in 1940 that attracts the attention of all the media in the country. This historical fact gives rise to the Mexican writer to immerse the reader in a perfectly woven story that puts on the table, in a central space, the complexities of motherhood and the relationships between mothers and daughters.

This story starring a polar bear, Nanuq, hides one of the most emotional, beautiful and wild stories of maternal love: that of a mother bear who struggles to give life and keep her two little ones with her in an environment as fascinating as it is inhospitable. . Biologist and explorer James Raffan (translation by Elena Pérez San Miguel) narrates in an absolutely vivid and masterful way Nanuq’s tireless journey through a space, the fragile ecosystem of the Arctic, which human activity is changing too quickly, making it increasingly difficult the survival of the 6,000 polar bears that are estimated to inhabit it.

“For us it has become completely natural to speak as if we were taking an exam or were in one when we are in contexts in which we have to act as parents,” says the young narrator of this hilarious novel that pushes the reader several times. to laughter. The Danish author Stine Pilgaard—translation by Daniel Sancosmed Masiá—conquered the public and critics of the Nordic country with the voice of the protagonist of this light rural comedy. The text is full of brilliant reflections on motherhood in the 21st century and on the confusion that it causes in a person raised in the individualism of the big city to emigrate to a very particular rural environment whose life is marked by a school for adults. In it, students, teachers – the protagonist’s partner is one of them – and the families of the latter coexist, in an underworld that borders on the sectarian and which the narrator sharpens in her cynical and sharp ramblings.

“Unlike 90% of parents, mine were never interested in me finally leaving them alone, on the contrary. “Mary often repeats that I don’t have children because I have these parents,” says Dorothea Dodds, the endearing protagonist of this novel narrated in two voices (the other voice is that of her cousin Mary). And that phrase already explains a lot about the life of Dorothea who, at almost 60 years old and taking advantage of a trip from Argentina to England to attend her uncle’s funeral, dares for the first time to escape the control of her parents, who acted as She was a kind of assistant, someone who was always there for everything. During this kind of British ‘road trip’, with the sense of humor and tenderness with which Mariana Sández usually endows her characters, we learn about past family episodes that explain a woman who begins to find herself, estranged, for end, from the perpetual shadow of their parents.