Three Mothers

By Sonia Lambert

A lyrical debut that explores the complexities of mother-daughter relationships and long-buried secrets from post-war Europe to modern-day London. At twenty-five, Susie is all grown up, working a job that pays the bills and living with her long-term boyfriend in their own apartment-better yet, she's hours away from her childhood home. But her mother's sudden cancer diagnosis forces Susie to reconcile a daughter's memories of her mother with the reality of a woman approaching death. Determined to understand the unexplained silences between her mother and grandmother before it's too late, Susie confronts the secrets that have become embedded in her family's past. Between stories of betrayals and births emerges an engaging narrative that explores women's disparate roles of mother, lover, and independent spirit; and what happens to the generations of women who are all three.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425219127
• ISBN13: 9780425219126
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Berkley
• Length: 338 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

An emotionally gripping novel

This turned out to be a real page-turner. Sonia Lambert has a wonderful ability to express the crazy intensity of emotion felt by a new mother. This book juxtaposes the emotional life of young women in three generations of a family, each chapter darting between the 1940s, the '70s and the present day, and showing how the strong bond of motherhood can survive tragedy and upheaval. The narrative technique is very effective and pushes the story forward. Great writing gives you a close feeling of identification with the characters, whether in WW2 India or modern-day Britain. Lambert says in the acknowledgements that this moving story is substantially based on reality, and this probably helped the book achieve its emotional impact.

fascinating character study

In 1945 Helene gives birth to a daughter, but her spouse stationed in India, writes to tell her to leave the baby with her mom as the climate is not good for a newborn. Susie travels by herself leaving Vera with her mother and her sister Lottie. On her trek overseas, Helene falls in love with a RAF pilot. Helene's youngest daughter, Vera loves the fervor of the late 1960s as London swings, but Paris lives the passion of the era. She becomes pregnant and debates within herself what to do with the fetus she carries especially since she does the unheard of: leaving her cheating husband and return to her mom for help. In 1996 although Vera's second husband Steve, her sister Lottie, and her other adult child Gus are alive and well, her oldest child mid twenties Susie cares for her as she is dying from cancer. Three months after her mom Vera died, Susie is cleaning out the house and is still learning much about her mom and her maternal grandma. THREE MOTHERS is a fascinating character study that focuses deeply into the interrelated yet separate lives of three generations of English women. The three moms are fully developed protagonists so their love and loathing of one another seems genuine. Keep plenty of tissues handy as this novel hits home as Sonia Lambert provides a powerful look at the changing roles of motherhood in the latter half of the twenty century through the lives of these three women as the cycle of death and rebirth continues with the next generation a decade later. Harriet Klausner