Diving in the waters of parental concerns
It’s hard to blame anyone for feeling nostalgic over the simple “eat your vegetables” parenting rules of yesteryear. But for parents in the post-“Stranger Danger” era, there are umpteen new worries to juggle beyond the possibility of a neighbourhood child snatcher. Managing potential food allergies and excessive screen time can trigger one level of panic, but how do you even go about explaining environmental catastrophes to a media-savvy kid?
As the mom of a 7-year-old, Toronto author Jessica Westhead is familiar with the anxieties of modern parenting. Recently she’s been debating whether to let her daughter walk solo down the block to the local convenience store. But even under her watchful eye, Westhead knows there will be others who judge or, worse, call the police if they spot a young girl walking alone.
“There’s always a low-level threat from something, from all over the place,” Westhead says. “You have to let go of that to live your normal life and to not pass that on to your child.”
While Westhead does a “pretty good job” of balancing her concerns — one of her biggest issues right now is helping her daughter bond with a new pet hamster — she wanted to capture the complexities of parenthood with her new novel, Worry.
Known for delivering empathetically funny, quirky and occasionally sad character studies in her four previous novels and story collections, Westhead decided to go “full darkness” for her most personal book to date. “I wanted to capture that as much as you are trying to be in the present and enjoy being a parent, there’s stuff to be anxious about.”
While recent blockbusters such as Gin Phillips’ Fierce Kingdom, Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny and Aimee Molley’s The Perfect Mother (there is a pattern here) involve the disappearance or murder of a child, Westhead knew that as a writer, this narrative path was not for her.
Since becoming a mom, her ability to even watch a Netflix trailer for certain movies or TV shows where the plotline relies on violence against women or children proved that her skin is too thin to handle such a sensitive topic. Worry straddles the line between these momdanger thrillers and the familial literary dramas of Meg Wolitzer, who has acted as something of a mentor to Westhead since the two first met at the Banff Centre in 2016.
Worry builds its throttling tension through the story of Ruth, the alpha-protective mother of precocious almost-4-year-old Fern as they visit a family cottage belonging to Ruth’s lifelong pal, free-wheeling Stef. While every aspect of Fern’s childhood is regimented, from her snack choices to her speed running on the beach, Stef’s twins run wild on a diet of mac & cheese and video games. A stranger (danger!), in the form of Stef’s partying neighbour, Marvin, and his mysteriously absent wife, ramp up the nail-biting chill.
The idyllic cosy setting and the familiar hedonistic mantra of “cottage time!” churns vacation fun into a sinister backdrop for a crime that readers won’t be sure has been committed. Even Ruth gets in on the party action, imbibing in a few warm beers and other cottage treats while loosening her grip on Fern.
“There’s this escape from responsibility and then people indulge in junk food and booze and other recreational substances, maybe more than they normally do because there’s this sense that the normal rules don’t apply,” says Westhead, who loves her own cottage time with friends where their kids run free. “There’s also this sense of claustrophobia that I wanted to explore because you’re essentially trapped in what’s often a small space with these other people. So emotions and tensions can run high.”
Without giving away spoilers, Ruth and Stef share a complicated past as revealed through flashbacks and heartbreaking third-person exposés that slowly unfurl through the book. Worry becomes as much a reflection on adult relationships as it is about a parent desperately wanting to make the best choices for their child. Westhead sees Ruth and Stef’s entanglement and their opposing views on parenting as mirroring her own internal struggle.