Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas

I got this from Blogging for Books. It is a disciplined system. You take one book read it, review and then take another. With Netgalley one does tend to go berserk. Like a kid in a candy store really.

This was a tough read and one I had to do in stages. Josephine and Douglas have a nice family. Josephine is now a stay at home Mother, Douglas is a computer geek, and three children. Two pretty girls and one boy. 

Will has been diagnosed as autistic and it is for this reason that Josephine stays at home. Very early in the story you know that the friction between the daughters and the mother are not the average outbursts of adolescence and puberty which every parent faces at some stage or the other. These outbursts and feelings are viceral, deep and vicious and you are beginning to question who is at fault here.

Telling very much more would be giving away the story which is convoluted, dark, intense and very emotional. How children do get caught up in an abusive home life and how helpless even an eighteen year old and a sixteen year old can be let alone the eleven year old is what strikes one very much. A sixteen year old is very much under her parents thumb because of the financial implications of support and home. Take that away and you have someone floundering. Having someone overall in charge of you, mother or father who is psychotic, deranged and simply evil makes life so much more difficult. Add to it a scheming, manipulative character who can lay on the charm like a tap turned on and you have a very difficult life for the entire household.

Each character was unique. Each had to handle the situation in a different way and still come out of it unscathed. Sadly one of them did not come out of it at all, and one was very very damaged.

A brilliant story. So glad I got to this one.