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It’s been encouraging and building up a little bit of confidence. But I’m also very excited, and people who’ve read it so far, I’ve heard some good things from them. It’s my first book, and I’ve wanted to write a book since I was a little kid, so it’s pretty surreal that there are going to be real people out there reading it. How are you feeling?īrit Bennett: I’m feeling pretty nervous. Roxane Gay: The Mothers is coming out very soon. Over the course of a half hour, we talked about so much, including the challenges of book touring, how she created a sense of place in her novel, how the story came to be, and what influences her work. I had the opportunity to talk on the phone with Brit Bennett just before her novel was released. She observes, “Monique and Kasey’s love for Aubrey hung in their eyes, and even though it wasn’t meant for Nadia, she inched closer, holding her hands up to the warmth.” There is so much want in this moment, and really, it is this want for love, for the warmth of belonging to other people, that is the heart of this novel. Take, for example, when Nadia spends time with Aubrey, Aubrey’s sister Monique, and Monique’s partner Kasey. There is a real tenderness to how Bennett tells this story and to how she writes these characters who are so richly fleshed out, so unbearably human. After her relationship with Luke ends, Nadia spends the summer before college developing a deep friendship with Aubrey, another young woman from her church, who is living with her sister because Aubrey’s mother has chosen a man over her children.Īs the relationships grow and shift between Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey over the years, we also follow the story of the church community and “the Mothers,” who see everything and know everything about everyone in the Upper Room community. When Nadia learns she is pregnant with Luke’s child, she decides to have an abortion because she is headed to college - and so much more than the life she is leading in Oceanside, a town outside San Diego. The story begins, though, with a passionate relationship between an ambitious girl with a secret that could keep her from realizing her dreams and a boy whose dreams ended before they really began.ĭuring her senior year of high school, Nadia Turner has recently lost her mother when she meets Luke Sheppard, the preacher’s son from the church her family attends, Upper Room Chapel. This is a novel about so many things - mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, grief, faith, community, Southern California, and how some relationships last a lifetime.
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Brit Bennett’s debut novel The Mothers has stayed with me since I first read it, the words and the intimacy of the prose seeping into my pores.