The Mothers

Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. What was your initial reaction to the narrative voice of the Mothers? How did this collective, gossiping chorus shape your experience of the story and your feelings about the characters from the very beginning?

2. For those who have read Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, how does the exploration of secrets and their impact on community and identity in The Mothers compare? Do you see similar themes or narrative threads connecting Bennett’s two novels?

3. Which scene, character choice, or relationship has lingered with you the most since you finished reading, and what makes it so memorable for you?

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Nadia is desperate to escape Oceanside, while Aubrey seeks to build a stable, rooted life there. Have you ever felt a similar pull between the desire to leave a place behind and the longing to belong somewhere? What do you think drives these different impulses in the characters?

2. Nadia and Aubrey’s friendship is built on a shared sense of loss but is ultimately destroyed by a devastating secret. Thinking about important relationships in your own life, how essential is complete honesty? Are there situations where withholding a truth might be a form of protection?

3. The Upper Room church community is a source of both genuine support and intense scrutiny. How have you experienced the positive and negative sides of a close-knit community, whether it’s a neighborhood, a workplace, or a family?

4. The novel portrays forgiveness as a messy, ongoing process rather than a singular event. How did the characters’ struggles with forgiveness resonate with or challenge your own understanding of what it means to forgive?

5. Nadia’s choice to terminate the pregnancy is a decision that ripples through her entire life. Have you ever faced a single, defining choice that shapes your future path and your sense of self over many years? How did the long-term ramifications of this choice surprise you? 

6. Robert copes with grief by removing all photos of his late wife, while Nadia clings to her memories of her mother. How do these different approaches to loss affect their relationship with each other? Which character’s method of grieving, if any, did you find more relatable?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. The guide highlights the Black church as a central institution providing both support and social pressure. How does the novel bring this duality to life through the Upper Room Chapel community? Where did you see it acting as a haven, and where did it feel more like a cage?

2. What does the novel suggest about the complex relationship between personal faith, community doctrine, and reproductive choice? How does Nadia’s story challenge or complicate assumptions about these intersections?

3. How did the Southern California setting, with its transient military population and proximity to the ocean, contribute to the characters’ feelings of being in between states of life, caught between the past and the future?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. What is the effect of having the Mothers narrate large parts of the story with a collective “we”? How does this first-person plural voice shape your perception of the events and characters, especially Nadia, who is so often the subject of their speculation?

2. How do Luke’s limp and the golden baby feet pin work as motifs to make internal, emotional pain physically present and tangible in the story? What other symbols function to make abstract emotional states tangible? 

3. Nadia and Aubrey are presented as clear foils, especially in their responses to trauma and their ideas about motherhood. In what ways does their contrasting development throughout the novel illuminate the central theme of Motherhood as Both Aspiration and Burden?

4. Do you believe Luke achieves any genuine growth by the end of the novel, or is he trapped in a cycle of seeking absolution without doing the work of true repentance? What specific moments support your view of his character arc?

5. The narrative voice of the Mothers functions as a kind of modern Greek chorus. Can you think of other novels that use a collective narrator, such as Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides? How does Bennett’s use of this technique compare, and what unique purpose does it serve in telling this particular story?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

1. A film adaptation of The Mothers is reportedly in development. If you were the casting director, who would you choose to play Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey? What qualities would you look for in the actors to capture these complex characters?

2. The story is largely framed by the Mothers, with deep dives into the perspectives of Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey. Imagine a key scene from the point of view of a secondary character like Robert or Latrice. How might seeing an event through their eyes change your understanding of it?

3. If you were to write a letter from Nadia to Aubrey 10 years after the book ends, what would it say? What would you imagine their relationship, if they have one at all, looking like after so much time has passed?