FDL Reads is proud to present our first guest review, written by Monica Friedman, comics reviewer at Panels and creator of qwerty vs. dvorak. Monica lives in Tuscon, Arizona, has a master’s degree in creative writing, and a Dewey Decimal tattoo.
Mothers Tell Your Daughters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Reviewed by: Monica Friedman, Guest Reviewer, Contributor at Panels
Genre: Short Stories
Suggested Age: Adults
We are all just feeling our way.
The world of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, award-winning author Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new short fiction collection, is a physical one, tangible with the hard edges of power tools and the soft contours of sagging flesh. Campbell knows the sensation of earth and gravel and velvet on skin, a dog’s tongue on a bare wrist, a horse’s hoof against a fragile rib, the full range of a man’s touch, from sensual to violent. She writes the ache of a body that stands for eight hour shifts and the pain of a heart held at a distance, and she writes it with a tremendous depth of beauty and fervent meaning: straight talk with unexpected flourishes of raw perfection.
Campbell’s protagonists, the working class people of southwestern Michigan, are wells of bottomless strength. Their water may taste bitter, but it still slakes the thirst. There is power in their struggle, and the small rewards are all the sweeter for their terrible cost. The suffering of drug addicts, of victims of sexual assault, of women who love imperfectly: these are all rendered into perfection through an exquisite arrangement of words.
At the heart of this collection lies the condition of love in whatever shape we find it: of women for men, of mothers for unborn babies, of grandparents for the children of their children. Love may be one thing, but its expression takes infinite shapes. In the eponymous story, “Mothers, Tell Your Daughters,” a woman who has lost the power of speech can only think the words she wishes to share with her angry child. Mom recounts innumerable hurts—broken bones, broken heart—suffered silently while toiling to survive, as her successful, professional daughter still fumes over the moments she felt her mother failed to protect her as a child. “I never denied you kids the experience of pulling yourself up with your own strength…because I knew you could be strong,” the mother thinks. Her love, sturdy and silent, goes unseen.
These stories, perhaps Campbell’s most powerful and beautifully written, carry great weight, and yet they unfold like silk in the reader’s mind. Through the seamless nature of its prose, Mothers, Tell Your Daughters draws readers into the world of the heart, never mind if they’ve never driven the dirt roads of rural Michigan in a beat up pickup truck. Readers know truth when they read it.
Rating: 5/5
About FDL Reads
Welcome to FDL Reads, weekly book reviews from Fondulac District Library. Librarians (and possibly some other guest reviewers) review all types of books, from children’s picture books, young adult favorites, to the latest adult thriller, and share their thoughts each week at fondulaclibrary.org. If the book is owned by Fondulac District Library (or another local library), you’ll see a direct link to the catalog entry and whether or not it is available. If it is checked out or at another local library, you will be able to place a hold as long as you have your library card and PIN numbers. As with any book review, these are our opinions…we disagree amongst ourselves about books frequently. We all have different likes and dislikes, which is what makes the world an interesting place. Please enjoy, and keep on reading!