Haunted by the truth
A Pittsburgh-based tale of memory and mystery
Zoje Stage’s latest novel, “Mothered,” her fourth, is about the fractured relationship between a mother and daughter, both dealing with a horror in their past that has affected them deeply. Despite being united by an event that neither of them can shed, they deal with the past in vastly different ways. What transpires throughout this book is an untangling of secrets, family, longing and the terror the unspeakable can create.
The book follows Grace, a hair stylist in her mid-to-late 30s with a secret life of online catfishing; she has taken some big steps in life by recently purchasing a home. It is early 2020, and life seems to be going her way. Yet, uncertainty looms through ever-growing concerns over a virus that has been dominating news stories. (Ms. Stage never mentions COVID-19 in the book, but it is well implied.) Grace’s life is about to take a pause.
It is during this period of uncertainty that Grace hears from her recently widowed mother, Jackie, who had moved to Florida with a second husband “half a lifetime ago,” and is asking to move back to Pittsburgh with her daughter. Local readers will be familiar with the book’s settings, such as the “Escher like” Greenfield neighborhood with its “too many steps” perched on steep hillsides, and other locations such as Squirrel Hill and Oakland, as well as references to Fox Chapel, Sewickleyand Mt. Lebanon.
With her mother back in her life, Grace is haunted by a past that reveals itself through gruesomely lucid and unsettling dreams that often involve the book’s other central character: her deceased sister Hope. The memory of her sister and the questions that surround her sister’s death have plagued Grace since her sister’s passing. Her mother’s arrival has provided her an opportunity to address the questions that have tormented Grace for decades, and to further inquire about their father — a matter Grace knows very little about.
With resentments and secrets on both sides, they are both searching for a truth that neither of them wish to confront. Mother and daughter live with a guilt that reveals itself slowly throughout the rather frantic pageturner Ms. Stage has set forth.
This book revisits many of the discomforts the COVID-19 pandemic created for us through personal isolation. Many moments for Grace are experienced through deep thoughts and disturbing dreams that likely stemmed from this seclusion. Ms. Stage leaves the pandemic as an ambiguous character in the book, yet its effects linger over nightmare-addled Grace.
Consistent with how the virus briefly shrunk our worlds to self-contained “bubbles,” there are only a handful of characters introduced in the book, though Grace and her mother are the only ones with true arcs. Still, Ms. Stage’s narration is a superbly navigated exercise in the lives of those we meet, without the frustrations of putting the book down with unanswered questions.
Though the book’s ending is predictable, Ms. Stage’s storytelling is powerful enough to force you to shift around your seat because of how she is able to shed light on her characters’ deepest horrors: the truth.
Zoje Stage will be reading at Carnegie Library Lecture Hall as a part of the “Made Local” series on March 16th at 6 p.m. More information and tickets are available through Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures.