The Mothers by Keith Botsford

The Mothers is part of a complex series of autobiographical stories, of which O Brother! (in Out of Nowhere) was the first. The Mothers are the women in Jim Mount’s life: his adoring (and rejected) mother, Felicita (ironical name for her, “Happiness”), and the four women he loved and lived with: Louise is a sexually voracious painter; Maria, Mount’s real beloved, a mini-skirted prole; Natasha, she of the prodigiously curly hair and deadpan attitude, a rich man’s wife; and Francine, who is leaving as the novel begins, the ultimate cool, Cartesian, perfect woman in whose arms Mount thought he’d die.

Mount sees that when “girls”become “Mothers”, something changes in them. Botsford’s portraits are seething, polyphiloprogenitive, often terrifyingly intense and mysogynistic. They are also deeply loving, life giving, and generous. And anyone who’s ever read him knows that Botsford is a masterful writer: word-for-word, and imaginative.

After a notable early career as a novelist and editor, KEITH BOTSFORD describes himself as having been "sidetracked" into journalism (The Sunday Times, The Independent, La Stampa), working variously as sportswriter, food columnist and US correspondent. Half Italian and half American, born in Brussels, educated in England, he returned to writing fiction in 1989 and now lives in Boston where he is a professor of journalism, history and international relations, and edits, with Saul Bellow, The Republic of Letters.

“The Mothers is a tremendously moving book. Jim is a real person, truly there on the page. Not always likeable, not always decent, but gnarly with life.”
JAMES WOOD