If you have read this novel already and are now worrying about my personal character and how dangerous I may or may not be... never fear. It was only sometimes like looking inside my own head. Definitely not the bit at the end where things got freaky.
But even then I sort of got it.
If you haven't read it and are now confused... well... that's sort of the Motherthing experience. It's literary (not my favourite) but also somewhat campy, suburban horror (one of my faves). It's about grief and mother issues, and... hoo boy can I relate there.
Motherthing is the story of Abby, who prides herself on being one of the children from broken homes who made it. She has a good life and is wildly, desperately in love with her husband. Their conversation in the opening scene, as they await bad news at the hospital, shows two people who are exactly on each other's wavelength. They are supportive and playful, and even in their darkest moments they can 'yes and' each other's bizarre conversational tangents.
Like Abby, husband Paul is a survivor who has come out of his mother's borderline personality disorder in (mostly) one piece. Sure he suffers depression and needs worksheets to cope with her behaviour, but he's doing ok. He even handled moving back in with her during during her recent breakdown.
This all changes when his mom commits suicide, sending Paul spiralling and believing that his mother's ghost is haunting the house. Abby - who childishly stole Laura's ring from her corpse after years of implications that she wasn't special enough to have it - both fears the truth of this, but also knows that if it was real, the ring would be the first thing ghost!Laura would tell her son about.
Abby becomes obsessed with motherhood - with having a baby of her own, dwelling on her own neglected upbringing, resenting Laura for refusing to be a mother surrogate, and developing a weird connection with an elderly lady in the care-home she works at. Meanwhile Paul is distant, making her feel like the ghost of Laura is trying to take him, manipulating him into ending his own life so Abby can't have her son.
In many ways it reminded me of Waiting for Ted, a novel I really didn't like. In both cases we have a main character seeking comfort in the traditional roles of femininity, and both twisting themselves in knots for a partner who isn't thinking about them at all; though in Paul's case 'my mother just killed herself' is a fair excuse for a little spousal neglect.
The difference is that, though Abby does worse things than the heroine of Waiting for Ted, she's a thousand times more likable. Her thoughts wander and bounce around naturally, and her mixed emotions are understandable. She is coming from a place of poverty whereas the main character in Waiting for Ted is an uber-privileged woman who is slumming it. Being in Abby's mind is a perverse delight.
As someone still in therapy for neglect, who prides herself on having become a relatively normal, successful person regardless of my trauma, I recognised my own thought patterns in there. My neglect was different, sure, but the yearning, aching need for something is there. The feelings of not having my own identity are real. When Abby bought food in for work and was satisfied that people ate it, proving that the normal types don't think she's disgusting... I've had that exact thought. I too find comfort in the cleanliness and hygiene I lacked (something that I struggle with on bad days too.) I too put the needs of someone else totally above my own 'worthless' ones.
I almost felt betrayed as Abby's choices become darker, as one might when one identifies with a character who does terrible things.
I think that if there is a flaw here, it's the the 'haunting' is underused. Much like How to Sell a Haunted House, this book wants to entice readers with a traditional haunted house story, but then cheaps out by not providing much of a haunting. Even the title represents this trick with it's not-so-subtle invocation of The Thing, yet the Motherthing of the title is unrelated to Abby's mother-in-law.
The book skews more heavily to literary horror than horror and therefore neatly sidesteps familiar tropes. That's fine, but it means that for large portions of the book you are essentially reading a character study based upon a marriage in crisis. If you want cheap thrills (as hinted by the tongue-in-cheek retro cover of a screaming woman) the book firmly sends you elsewhere, like a regular granny who has turned up as a hipster café wanting a macaroon and a cuppa.
If you are prepared to stick it out, I think the majority of horror fans will be pleased with the ending, though I don't think anyone is going to be putting this on their 'scariest books' list. If you go in with that in mind, I think you'll enjoy the time you spend in Abby's twisted mind. It certainly felt familiar to me.
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