HER MOTHERS

by E. M. Broner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 1975

A consciousness-raised catechism (her mothers are really her Sisters) with a single reprise--""Mother, I'm pregnant with a baby girl""--which provokes a hundred different responses from ""May she be a doll, a living doll"" to ""Tell her there are no alternatives."" This novel in the form of a roundelay in the form of a lament (blue is for baby girls--born to trouble, deprivation, discomfiture, loss) is discontinuously articulated by Beatrix, whose ways were ""unbecoming"" as a child, who lost a husband but gained (?) Lena early on, who now is working on a book Unafraid Women while looking disconsolately in the mirror--too hirsute always, now too fat as well. For a while (the best part here) Beatrix looks back on her historical mothers--Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson and Louisa May Alcott and Doris Lessing and Anais Nin, has unsatisfactory exchanges with Lena (""Shut up""), meets her former husband again (he's successful in film) and makes a serious much of her biblical foremothers. Beatrix' book is witty, stylized, shapeless (that last section just dangles) and is overly familiar in its repudiation of men and menses--the old biological cul de sac. ""Mother, I'm pregnant and I am going to write a book."" ""Better yet you should have a baby--it's easier.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975

Categories: FICTION