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Ellen Isaacs | |
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The Good Mother is the painful story of a woman, Anna, who tries to rebuild her life with her 6-year-old daughter Molly after she splits up with her husband, Brian. She moves, gets a job, and eventually develops a relationship with a man, Leo, who brings out parts of herself she hadn't expressed before. An unfortunate incident triggers Brian to take legal action to get custody of Molly, which is all the more surprising after their reasonably amicable divorce. The book covers the legal proceedings and Anna's stunned reaction to it, how it harms her relationships with Leo. Once again, we see Anna steel herself against her losses, starting over again, each time more distant and further inside herself. This book is very real. I found it a compelling portrait of how the community and the legal system respond to personal issues having to do with raising children and sexuality. There is something very scary about how the courts can so dramatically affect our lives, even when the system does not seem well set up to determine what's right or what's best. But moreso, I was interested in Anna, how she adapted to the divorce by turning into herself, how she gradually emerges in her new relationship, but still with a harder, private self that she protects. Once the accusations break, again I felt her drawing in, numbing herself to her world and those who care about her. It rang true to me as the way many women (perhaps men too) deal with this type of hardship. In many ways, this book reminded me of Jane Hamilton's "A Map of the World," which also explored society's reaction to family issues and a woman's reaction to loss. The book spends some time discussing Anna's childhood as a piano student who never made it to prodigy status, and how that disappointment dominated her large extended family's perception of her, and therefore her perception of herself. There is an interesting contrast with the other side of her family, which seems cold and empty, but at least does not judge her, offering her a odd kind of comfort. Although this aspect of her life was interesting and helped draw my picture of Anna, I felt like there was still something missing in the connection between Anna the child, and Anna the adult. We eventually hear the stories that bring Anna from adolescence to her marriage, but somehow I didn't gain the sense of satisfaction that I did in Miller's "While I Was Gone" when the main character's life story came together. Still, Miller's perceptiveness and her ability to tell a compelling, thought-provoking story make this book a solid, enjoyable read.
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