Review by New York Times Review
HOW DO YOU BECOME a mother if you have, to all intents and purposes, lacked a mother? Can you be capable of nurture if you haven't been nurtured? These questions trouble Agnes Fuller, a 19-year-old college freshman with a superficially appealing but self-centered boyfriend - and an accidental pregnancy. Agnes has left behind a severely damaged home. Her mother has run away and is incommunicado; her older brother committed suicide three years earlier; her father has shrunk into an inert silence. Even before leaving, Agnes's mother was often absent or inaccessible. When Agnes discovers that she's pregnant, she flinches at the prospect of having an abortion, which clearly strikes her as yet one more intolerable rejection of life. The opening pages of "Motherest," a moving debut by Kristen Iskandrian, run the risk of misleading the reader. As Agnes negotiates her first weeks of collegiate life with a quirky roommate and a crush on a seemingly unattainable guy, there's a suggestion of whimsy that might have worked against the novel's challenging themes. But "Motherest" soon reveals itself to be fearless in rendering the pain our most intimate connections can inflict, as well as what it feels like to be a bright and skeptical young woman in desperate need of physical touch and a sense of home. Agnes's first-person voice increasingly conveys her unique personality and perspective. Her most pressing longings are poignant: to put her hand to her soon-to-beboyfriend's face, to sleep next to him in the library Much of the narrative is in the form of unsent letters from Agnes to her mother, letters that keep the thought of her near yet at the same time reinforce the awareness of her absence. Once Agnes has settled on keeping her child (and leaving the hapless boyfriend, now an ex, in the dark), the novel adeptly unfolds the physical and emotional changes wrought by her pregnancy Agnes thinks she wants someone around to "tell me what I should do," but in fact she rebuffs the possibility of help from numerous sources. In some cases, her refusal seems shortsighted; in others, we sense that she knows the coping methods on offer aren't right for her. While a support-group friend enthusiastically reads child-care manuals and consults checklists, Agnes hardly prepares at all. Is this a sign of her immaturity, or is she tuned in to subtler internal signals that will eventually steer her where she needs to go? To Iskandrian's credit, she convinces us that it can be both. With delicacy, Iskandrian guides us through Agnes's transformation from a passive, bewildered teenager to a young woman with realistic and flexible notions about love and becoming a parent. The final chapters bring a wrenching twist - beautifully handled - that tests her mettle. Agnes has developed into someone whose bereavements and responsibilities, rather than shutting her down, have opened her up. She can now see that "each of us comes into the world attached to another and then immediately gets severed. All of us, walking around, cut off from our mothers." Although she's tempted to view her baby as "someone who will always stay and never die and never leave," she comes to accept the fact that sorrow is part of the human condition: "There is the feeling alone that can be solved by others. And there is the feeling alone that can't." Can you become a good mother when you have lacked a mother's care? Time will tell, Iskandrian seems to say. "Motherest" is wonderfully agnostic about differing approaches to the nurturing process, generous in its view of the way not just mothers but fathers, daughters and siblings struggle with what life brings them, doing the best they can. ? PAMELA ERENS is the author, most recently, of the novels "Eleven Hours" and "The Virgins."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 27, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Barely into her freshman year of college in the 1990s, Agnes is dealing with both the loss of her brother, tragic and definitive, and the more recent loss of her mom, who seems to have run away from the family's New Jersey home. At school in New England, when she's not writing unsent letters to her mom or avoiding returning her dad's calls, Agnes is distracted by philosophy class, interesting new friendships, and most of all, her crush and soon boyfriend, Tea Rose (Agnes' name for him). All is mostly bliss until spring break, when Tea Rose meets someone else, and Agnes sees a plus sign on a pregnancy test. A loner who can no longer be one, Agnes moves home for the summer, shares the situation with her loving but closed-off dad, and confronts it, however slowly, herself, while under it all, she wonders if mothering is an inheritance or a story to rewrite. Agnes' voice, in her heartrending letters and her funny, sad, dead-true perceptions, propels Iskandrian's brilliant debut about life's continuously shifting, perplexing intimacies.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Iskandrian's stellar first novel is set in the early '90s, as college freshman Agnes, adjusting to life away from home, learns her mother has left her father. As a coping mechanism, she begins writing letters to the absent woman, though she has no idea where her mother is and cannot mail them. Each letter is a kind of journal entry that reveals her intimate moments: sexual encounters, drunken revelry, and lingering thoughts about her older brother, Simon, who committed suicide three years earlier. These letters continue after Agnes becomes pregnant by her Nirvana-obsessed ex and moves back home for the summer. Agnes and her father wade into the mystery of pregnancy together, complete with visits to the local clinic and meetings for single mothers, and their relationship wavers as Agnes's due date approaches and they cope with the empty spaces left by Agnes's mother and Simon. Iskandrian's debut is sharp and honest, recounting Agnes's journey in a crafty mix of first-person narration and epistolary forms, and Agnes's voice charms with a subtle undercurrent of humor and sarcasm making this a delightful and satisfying reading experience. Iskandrian is a writer to watch. Agent: Emma Patterson, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT O. Henry Prize winner -Iskandrian's debut novel starts as a nostalgic tale about the 1990s, with a pastiche of tropes to signal the era. Nirvana is the real thing, and Kurt Cobain's suicide devastates Tea Rose. In their first year in college, Tea Rose impregnates girlfriend Agnes, who has a panic attack during an obligatory scene at a Planned Parenthood clinic and tries to forget about being pregnant. Yet, Agnes lets things happen; passivity is her primary characteristic. One of the novel's strongest but likely unintended themes is privilege. Pregnant Agnes has no responsibilities. Dad takes care of everything. At no time do material concerns like money, employment, health insurance, or housing ever interfere with her extensive and intimately described physical and mental reactions to being pregnant. The narrative's focus is on Agnes's feelings. She writes letters to her missing mother, about whom readers learn little. Agnes is all there is. If readers don't love her, they are out of luck. Verdict Not a good bet. With better writing, interesting and well-rounded characters, and a more compelling story, Brit Bennett's The Mothers does a more complete job of depicting the consequences of an unexpected teen -pregnancy.-Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Conventional wisdom says that when a teenager has a baby, her life is ruined.But this isn't always true. In fact, it can be the opposite. For pragmatic and wryly observant Agnes, getting pregnant during her first year of college was both unplanned and inevitable. Like many young adults, she and boyfriend Tea Rose had frequent unprotected sex and were seemingly oblivious to the risk of pregnancy. Or maybe her unconscious was at play. After all, when Agnes began her studies, she was still grieving the recent suicide of her older brother, Simon. On top of this, her mother had disappeared, abruptly leaving husband and child for an unknown destination. To say that Agnes is forlorn and in need of human connection is an understatement, but she is intellectually savvy and able to compartmentalize, so she throws herself into academia with relish and success. She also becomes thoroughly entwined with Tea Roseat least until he dumps her for someone else. By that point Agnes knows she's pregnant and opts to keep the child. This is not because she is anti-abortion but because she can't face abandoning the fetus as she has been abandoned by her mom and brother. And although her dad tries, he is essentially clueless, perhaps because he too is befuddled by mourning and monumental loss. Instead, there's Joan, a quirky but devoted friend, who plays an essential role in the face of Agnes' near-constant emotional and physical crises. As the story unfolds, letters Agnes writes to her absent motherthey are, of course, never mailedare juxtaposed with an otherwise straightforward first-person narrative to form a diarylike peek into the young woman's meandering mind. Taken together, they form a tableau that is heartbreaking, hilarious, and poignantoften at the same time. A powerfully perceptive story written with love, realism, and humor and that feels fresh despite the familiar terrain. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
