Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! Since we just had Mother’s Day this past weekend (hi Mom!), I thought I’d look at some mother-daughter relationships in fiction. Some are good, some are bad, all are interesting.
White Oleander: Astrid has many mothers- primarily, her biological one, Ingrid, whose reckless murder of a faithless lover leaves her daughter to the mercies of the foster care system. The relationships she has with the various women who take her in change her in different ways.
The Red Tent: This book tells the story of Dinah and her mothers: Leah, who birthed her, and Leah’s three sisters, all of whom became the wives of Jacob. It’s a lovely story focused on the relationships between women and the ways each of her mother-aunts leaves indelible fingerprints on Dinah.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Katie Nolan prefers her son and plays favorites in a way that feels a little jarring to a modern audience (maybe just me?), but that doesn’t mean she loves her daughter Frances any less fiercely.
Pride and Prejudice: Mrs. Bennett is always scheming to get her five daughters married off and makes many blunders/faux pas along the way, but her love for her girls is always obvious.
The Golden Compass: This is really across the entire His Dark Materials series, but the growing relationship between Lyra and her mother, Mrs. Coulter takes lots of twists and turns over the course of the series.
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: While I prefer to view this novel by itself (rather than along with its companion Little Altars Everywhere), I find the complicated relationship between Vivi and her daughter Sidda fascinating…remembering that our family members are people with stories that go far beyond any particular bond is always helpful.
Chocolat: I love this book, and the way Joanne Harris draws the relationship between Vianne and her daughter Anouk with such devoted love and tenderness is definitely a part of why I enjoy it so much.
The Guineveres: Each of the four main characters in this book has a different story about her own mother…each of which leads to being left at a convent as a teenager, which are revealed only piecemeal as the story progresses. By the way, this book is only $2.99 right now on the Kindle!
The Joy Luck Club: The story of four immigrant Chinese ladies and their American-raised daughters (and the inevitable clashes that result from that tension, along with the natural ones that come along with being mothers and daughters), it’s an emotionally perceptive look at the way the told and untold stories of the mothers’ lives play against the lives of their daughters.
Beloved: This story asks an impossible question- how far could a mother’s love go? Escaped slave Sethe commits an unspeakable act when she believes she and her child are about to be captured and forced back into bondage, which figuratively and then literally haunts her for years. I tend to be wary of magical realism, but this book uses it powerfully.
