Book of the Month December

The Other Mother

by Rachel M. Harper

Read with me!

December's selection is The Other Mother by Rachel M Harper.

Jenry Castillo is a musical prodigy, raised by a single mother in Miami. He arrives at Brown University on a scholarship—but also to learn more about his late father, Jasper Patterson, a famous ballet dancer who died tragically when Jenry was two. On his search, he meets his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a legendary professor of African American history and a fixture at the Ivy League school, who explodes his world with one question: Why is Jenry so focused on Jasper, when it was Winston’s daughter, Juliet, who was romantically involved with Jenry’s mother? Juliet is the parent he should be looking for—his other mother.

The Other Mother is a daring, ambitious novel that celebrates the complexities of love and resilience—masterfully exploring the intersections of race, class, and sexuality; the role of biology in defining who belongs to whom; and the complicated truth of what it means to be a family.

HAPPY READING!

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Book Review Questions for November

Trespasses

1. The book is set in the time of sectarian violence over control of Northern Ireland that came to be known as the Troubles. How does the conflict manifest itself, and how do the various characters situate themselves in relationship to it? How do Cushla, her mother, and her brother contrast in their attitudes toward it?

   
   

2. Cushla lives with her mother, a widow with a drinking problem. As the story progresses, we see how differently mother and daughter view the world. What are the most striking divergences in their perspectives? How do they shift over the course of the novel?

   
   

3. Over the course of the novel, Cushla becomes more and more deeply involved with the family of one of her students after his father is savagely beaten. What did you think of her attempts to help Davy’s family? What social and class tensions enter into this relationship as well, and how do they affect it?

   
   

4. In the scene where Cushla is reading Cosmopolitan magazine just before she and Michael have sex in his car, what might Kennedy be showing us about differing attitudes to sex and women in the 1970s?

   
   

5. In its final section, the book skips ahead to the year 2015, when Cushla and Davy encounter each other again. What has changed for them, and about them? How does Cushla seem to look back at the events of their shared past? What does the ending leave indefinite?