I’ve got to start thinking about getting ready for work tomorrow, but I wanted to get this post done today instead of waiting until next week (by then I might have forgotten what I read or what it was about!)
I finished Good Mothers Don’t by East Coast author Laura Best. This is her first novel for adults and it was mostly very good. Elizabeth McKay is a wife and mother in rural Nova Scotia in 1960. She has a great husband and two lovely children, so what could be wrong, and why does she behave strangely so often? Turns out that she has mental health issues that significantly impact her ability to care for her family… and herself. When things get worse after her father’s death, she is sent to a psychiatric hospital, where she undergoes treatments and therapies to help her “get well”. Fifteen years later, she is living in a group home and doesn’t remember much about her past, but she hangs on to the five words that are the key to opening the door as she struggles to learn her “truth”. Told from various points of view and shifting from past to present, this novel explores isolation and connection, mental health issues and treatments in the 1960s, and what it means to be family. I loved this book until about two thirds of the way through, but found that the ending, at least for me, was a bit flat. I guess I was expecting more, or not necessarily “more”, but maybe “different”. Anyway, it was a good book, well-written, with believable characters, exploring serious topics, so I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in domestic fiction.
That’s all for today. Enjoy the lovely fall weather and stay dry this coming week!
Bye for now…Julie
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