“Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.” Who is that talking? “Real Housewife of New Jersey” Teresa Giudice? Or Mrs. Bennet, from “Pride and Prejudice”?
JK. If it were the former, the grammar would not be so impeccable. But the point stands, as Carrie Mullins discusses in the first essay (“The Real Housewives of Longbourn”) from “The Book of Mothers.” Mullins finds plenty of similarities between the products of the Bravo network and Jane Austen: The mothers tend to be money-obsessed, ignored and a little shaky when it comes to the morality of trading sex and/or love for money.
Mullins’ bracing, often hilarious collection contains many bold insights, in chapters devoted to mothers in literature, ranging from “Madame Bovary” (Mullins compares herself, unflatteringly, to the acquisitive title character) to “Little Women” (she notes how well Greta Gerwig’s film understood Marmee) to “The Color Purple.”
I was particularly fond of Mullins’ “The Joy Luck Club” essay, which locates the autobiographical elements in writer Amy Tan’s portrait of the complicated bonds of Chinese American moms and their grown daughters, and of the startling essay about Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” Called “Motherlove is a Killer,” it dives into the subtext of this statement: “Motherly love is sweet, supportive and self-sacrificial. It’s diving in front of the bus, not throwing your baby under it.”
If you know a mom who loves reading, Mullins may have created the Mother’s Day gift for you.
The Book of Mothers
By: Carrie Mullins.
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, 304 pages, $29.
