Mothers by Brenda Lozano (HC)

Longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize

From the author of Witches, a gripping, kaleidoscopic tale of two women in 1940s Mexico—one whose daughter has just been kidnapped and another who has just adopted a little girl

When the kidnapping of a little girl shocks the Mexican capital, the lives of two very different women become forever intertwined. Gloria Felipe lives a comfortable upper-class life with her husband and five children. Nuria Valencia comes from a working-class background and has been desperately trying to get pregnant in order to save her marriage. After traditional methods produce no results, she subjects herself to horrific fertility treatments designed and administered by men, and ultimately tries to adopt but is rejected on the basis that a woman in her early thirties is too old to adopt a baby. Failed time and again by the system and about to lose hope, she is presented with an opportunity that seems almost too good to be true.

Through the eyes of a wry unnamed narrator, we witness the battle of the Felipe family to recover their youngest member and the anguished attempts of the Valencia family to save their daughter from potential danger. With the twists and turns of a thriller, and Brenda Lozano's sharp yet poignant sense of humor, the novel asks how far mothers are willing to go in the name of love for their children, and at what cost.

REVIEWS

"Propulsive . . . [A]n insightful and sprawling book, clever enough to turn its formal contradictions into a strength. Heather Cleary’s translation from the Spanish has the wit and charm of the original . . . In a story that is conscious of its own telling, Cleary seizes the opportunity to add yet another metafictional layer, to great effect." —Bruna Dantas Lobato, The New York Times Book Review

"Mothers is Lozano’s most propulsive novel, a thriller with a social consciousness that takes an unapologetically feminist look at the pleasures, pressures, and terrors of motherhood in a patriarchal society beholden to money and access." —Cory Oldweiler, Southwest Review of Books

"From the get-go, Mothers, deftly translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary, puts the reader on alert." —Esther King

PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover Edition
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 978-1646222537
Pages: 208