The Other Mother: A Novel [Hardcover]

Gwendolen Gross (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2007

Amanda is a successful book editor at a prominent publishing house in New York City. Thea is a stay-at-home mother of three who has never really left the community in which she grew up. Amanda, eight months’ pregnant with her first child, and her husband move in next door to Thea and her family, and the two women find themselves both drawn to and repelled by each other and their opposing choices in the constant struggle to balance career and family life.

When a disaster forces Amanda and her family to take refuge in Thea’s home, the underlying tensions simmering between them are forced to the surface-and even more so when Thea fills in as Amanda’s temporary nanny. But once dead animals start appearing on Thea’s front porch-surely a macabre gift from Amanda?-the battle with “the other mother” begins in earnest.

With a keen eye for what pulls us apart and what brings us together, Gwendolen Gross has created a stunning, dark, suspenseful novel that is as brave as it is shocking.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gross's third novel (following Getting Out) documents the front lines of the Mommy Wars, but its real strength lies in exposing the complex inner battlefields motherhood can open up. Eight months pregnant Amanda, a successful children's book editor and dedicated New Yorker, picks up with her lawyer husband and moves to suburban Teaneck, N.J. Her new neighbor, Thea Caldwell, is a full-time mother of three who still lives in her childhood home and who arrives bearing brownies. When the newcomers take extended shelter in the Caldwells' basement following a damaging storm and, later, when Amanda hires Thea as her newborn's nanny, the growing intimacy between the two breeds resentment, bitterness and misunderstandings. The series of external crises designed to create tension and suspense are, in the end, less compelling than the women's own inner demons, revealed through alternating, and overlapping, first-person narration. Jersey resident Gross shows the strife between SAHMs (Stay at Home Moms) and WOTHs (moms who Work Outside the Home) to be a lot more nuanced than it's often portrayed. (Aug.)
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From Booklist

Maybe Thea resented Amanda moving into the house that once belonged to her childhood best friend. Perhaps Amanda was jealous of Thea's effortless domestic skills. Or maybe Thea couldn't approve of Amanda's decision to return to work after the birth of her daughter Malena, while Amanda failed to understand how Thea could find fulfillment as the stay-at-home mom of three. Whatever the reasons, it soon becomes clear that there is ample potential for animosity between these two neighbors, and the hostilities only escalate once Amanda's family is forced to move in with Thea's after their house is extensively damaged during a violent storm and Thea offers to become Malena's nanny. When dead animals start showing up on Thea's doorstep, however, Amanda is her first suspect, and, suddenly, whatever petty differences the two families may have had take on sinister new meaning. By using the alternating points of view of each intensely multifaceted woman, Gross paints an electrifyingly complex and explosively gripping portrait of contemporary, have-it-all motherhood. Haggas, Carol

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Crown (August 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307352927
• ISBN-13: 978-0307352927
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #930,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #17 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Friendship

More About the Author

Gwendolen Gross Talks Sisterhood and The Orphan Sister
BY RT BOOK REVIEWS, JULY 25, 2011 | PERMALINK

Today author Gwendolen Gross shares a behind the scenes look at her new novel, The Orphan Sister. Learn how this author's experiences and the love she shares with her siblings influenced her latest novel. And don't be surprised when this guest blog post brings tears to your eyes!

In one of my graduate school workshops, a terrific fellow from Brooklyn kept telling me, "You are clearly obsessed with da fatha, da son, da holy ghost. Always one in three!" His accent made me giggle, but he was wrong. Yes--I write quite a lot about threes, but I'm one of three sisters. And I'm Jewish.

Writing The Orphan Sister was easy, in some ways--the truths of sisterhood run like arteries through life, whether you have one sister, three sisters, no sisters. In fact, I have two sisters from one family, and another who is technically my half-sister, and a step-brother, though he may not be ushered to the fore at the flock of girls, but we used to run down mountains holding hands, so he's very much a part of my fictional narrative, and personal history, too.

There are many ideas about birth order--and I suppose I'm technically the middle child, the peace-maker, the one who wants everything to be alright. But who doesn't want everything to be alright? Let me know if first children are war-mongers or last children prefer bickering, because I haven't seen it like that. But I'm also an oldest in some ways, having lived with that step-brother for a while as a fourteen year old to his four. And then there's the youngest, Samantha, who is twenty years younger than I am. In many ways, she was the model for my character Clementine's feelings about Adam, her first nephew (and she caught that right away when she read the book). The first baby with whom I fell in love. I carried her in a snuggly and people asked whether she was my first--I was twenty, after all. I said no, I have two other sisters. But in some ways, she was a first--first chance to love a baby so much it hurt my body, arms bruised with the longing to hold, when I left to return to college, and then to fly cross-country when she was older. I missed her physically, the way you miss your own babies. But also the way you miss sisters.

My oldest sister, Claudia, taught me to read. I think she taught me to knit (though I'm sure Mom helped) because I have a weird combination style born of my sister's left-handedness. Apparently, we tried to off each other during the youngest years, but I don't remember that, I just remember that she was respite during parental storms, that I wanted to be like her, that I loved being her voice when she was too shy to ask the ice cream man for a fudgesicle. That my son smells like her in the mornings--that sometimes when I'm looking at him I see her, my first guide. My younger sister, Rebecca, was a wild thing when she was little--all frenetic naked energy and bright blue eyes. But as adults we've bonded over the mothering of boys.

Children have so little power, despite having much freedom. Everyone adult tells us what to do, what we can eat, where we are allowed to go. Sisters (and I mean this both specifically and metaphorically) can hold our hands to cross the street.

- Gwendolen Gross

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Way We Are, August 19, 2007

By 

Eileen Granfors (Santa Clarita, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Other Mother: A Novel (Hardcover)

My husband is used to my being engrossed in books, but he finally said "Hey, let's do something else!" That's a compliment to Ms. Gross.

I loved the book. I loved the way both points of view were made clearly through Amanda and Thea with opposing viewpoints that will never, ever mesh. I am not someone who rushes off to hold someone else's newborn, but I enjoyed the book, found the characters believable, the descriptions lush, and the interaction with the husbands quite true-to-life.

The ending held surprises, and I also liked the dynamics of the women's constant judgment of one another--so very true.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just About Mommy Wars, August 10, 2007

By 

Jennifer Donovan "5minutesforbooks" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Other Mother: A Novel (Hardcover)

Yes, the underlying issue of this book is the opposing viewpoints and ideologies of one mom against another--in this case the SAHM versus the mom going back to work. But Gwendolen Gross also hits the nail on the head about the way that other women size each other up--in looks, husbands, children's behavior, volunteer work, and gardens to name a few. She also perfectly captures a mother's love, from the beauty of a newborn baby to the tender release of your firstborn into adulthood and everything in between.

This book is not only beautifully written, but the human drama creates tension that causes this book to be a real page-turner.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Mothers, August 7, 2007

By 

lorilyn (Kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Mother: A Novel (Hardcover)

On the surface, The Other Mother is about the mommy-wars, specifically whether or not to go back to work after the baby is born.
Told in an alternating first-person narrative by two suburban mothers, one who works in the home as a SAHM (that's stay at home mom for those of you like me you may not know. I kept seeing that on message boards wondering what in the world it was until finally a friend filled me in) and one who continues to work outside the home.
The story centers around that choice and the judgments the two women hold for one another and themselves as they struggle to come to terms with the decisions they've made.
But it's also about something larger. There are no good guys and bad guys here. As I fell into this story, I identified with both of the women, feeling along with them their joys and resentments, fears and suspicions.
It's a story about being a woman in an internal and external landscape that is constantly changing. It's a story about relationship and history and love. And at its heart, mystery: the mysteries we all live with all the time, the questions we ask ourselves and the shifting answers.
The Other Mother reminded me that there's a conversation taking place. Sometimes we speak the words to one another and sometimes we only whisper them in the most private rooms in our hearts, but we are all telling our stories, learning our truths, changing our minds and walking the paths of womanhood, sisterhood, wifehood, self.
The writing here is both lush and precise, the details sensual. I found myself stopping to savor.
The Other Mother presents a true and familiar world in a thoughtful way that leaves you with much to ponder.