Good Mothers Don't Book Review

Good Mothers Don’t

by Laura Best

Good Mothers Don’t is a story of a young mother's fight against mental illness. It is a struggle that eventually pushes her to leave her children behind; she believes they will be safer and happier without her and the monster that lives within her. It is a story of her daring desire to return to her children, while all along confronting the failures she fears may define her as a mother - good mothers don’t abandon their children and “good mothers don’t go crazy”.

Best introduces us to Elizabeth in the Forties Settlement, where she lives with her husband and her two young children. It is there that we bear witness to Elizabeth’s ultimate unraveling: her want to escape her own thoughts and the whispering voices that do not leave her alone, and her recognition that death has already begun to decay her.

As you accompany Elizabeth through the fog on her quest for truth, you will be left feeling slightly woozy, as if you have been trapped underwater with her, struggling to reach the distorted and blurry faces of the past staring down through murky water.

As you follow Elizabeth on her journey from life in rural Nova Scotia to recovery in a group home and then back home again, you will feel anger, despair, joy and hope, both at the actions of a bold and reckless protagonist as well as the characters that surround her. But it is the hope that lingers, the hope that Elizabeth grips so tightly that will surge through your own fingers as you turn the pages of Good Mothers Don’t.