It’s always
interesting for me to compare two books that have some sort of over-arching
common theme. I just finished two books
with which I was alternating chapters to pace my reading. Last year when I was on vacation, I did that
with five books – reading one chapter in each, every night.
This time the thread
was mother-daughter relationships -- gone awry.
Why is it, so often, that stories are written about evil mothers [or step-mothers
to protect the innocent]. I don’t know
of any father-child relationships discussed in novels, where the father is evil
! – perhaps addicted to liquor or drugs and thus inflicting abuse on the child. Mean, nasty people abound, irrespective of gender,
but there is no ambivalence when it’s a father.
And that’s the interesting point for novelists to dig into with
mother-daughter relationships.
n “The Sacrifice” by Joyce Carol Oates published
now because of all the Ferguson uproar over white police issues in
African-American communities. In this
book, Mama, a half a gray-notch above her neighborhood’s crack ho’s, is afraid
of the ramifications of revealing the truth about the beating of her
15-year-old daughter by mama’s live-in, scum-bag [but I love him] druggie
boyfriend. So she and daughter blame
things on “white cops”, which in the end, gets everyone killed. Welcome to JCO.
n “The Perfect Witness” by Iris Johansen, is
almost in the fantasy genre: its theme is people with psychic abilities. Our protagonist’s mother has trained her
15-year-old heroine to obey her over all others in all matters, always! through
mama’s psychic ability to sway people. But our heroine is kidnapped by the good
guys at the last minute and proceeds down a path of psychic righteousness
leading to her mother being eaten alive by a tiger.
JCO’s
blatant exploitation of the current turmoil between black and white disappoints
me, but the writing is rock solid even if the theme is sordid. Nothing was a surprise as this morbid tale
slowly proceeded as if following a trashy newspaper story.
Johansen
also exploits all the themes that sell books: sex, money, beauty and
power. These things actually have
nothing to do with the main plotline, but are provided in ample doses
throughout the very predictable book.
In the end
it wasn’t just the bad mothers that tied these two books together. As books, they both exploited the seamiest
crap to boost book sales and movie rights.
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