The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah

Title:  The Wrong Mother

Author:  Sophie Hannah

Release date:  September 29, 2009

Publisher:  Penguin

Pages:  432

Genre:  Adult fiction, Thriller

Source:  Publisher

Sally Thorning is watching TV one ordinary evening when she hears the name of a man she wanted to forget she’d ever known:  Mark Bretherick.  But the face of Mark Bretherick on the screen is not the same person she met and spent a week with last year.  The Mark that Sally knew had a wife named Geraldine and a daughter named Lucy.  The Mark on TV had a wife named Geraldine and a daughter named Lucy, too, except that he’s on the news explaining that the two of them were found dead.

So, this book was sent to me as a surprise from the publisher, and since I’d heard good things about Sophie Hannah I finally decided to read it.  It’s hard to summarize The Wrong Mother because it’s sort of a complicated book.  I was beyond confused for at least the first fifty pages.  But once I sort of figured out what the mystery was here, it got very interesting very quickly.

Whenever I read a thriller, I find myself wondering why I don’t read them more often.  That was definitely true of The Wrong Mother – the book really had me wanting to read more of these kinds of books.  The plot was engaging and kept me on the edge of my seat.  I was totally in the dark about what was really going on, didn’t guess the truth at all, which is exactly what I require from these kinds of books.

And let’s talk a little about the characters.  They were written very, VERY well in my opinion.  Sally was just so authentic, I believed in her completely.  She was a flawed person, she had made this horrible mistake in her rendezvous with Mark Bretherick, but she was trying so hard to make up for it, trying so hard to be a good mother and a good wife in order to forgive herself for her transgression.  I felt her pain so deeply, I empathized with her desire to go back and erase that week she spent being someone other than herself, and I was so sad for her when the past came creeping back into her life in such a shocking and scary way.  I even sympathized with Geraldine, or at least the diary version of Geraldine, I didn’t think she was a good person by any means, but it was her honesty that got to me.  The fact that she was so upfront about her feelings about being a mother, even with herself, shocked me and made me sort of admire her.  In a weird way, I suppose.

Anyway, what I’m trying to tell you is that this book is GOOD.  It was better than I was expecting, it was more of a literary thriller than I was thinking it would be, so I loved that.  If you are a fan of these types of books (Tana French is the best comparison I can make), definitely pick up Sophie Hannah’s The Wrong Mother.  You won’t be sorry you did!

The Sparrow discussion questions

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell is quite possibly my favorite book of all time, so I was thrilled to be a part of the read-a-long in March hosted by Heather, Rebecca, and Florinda.  Here are my answers to the half-way point discussion questions.

1.  For first time readers, how does your reading so far match up to what you expected from this book?

As I said earlier, this is not my first time reading the book, it’s actually my second, but I wanted to add just how much more I’ve been getting out of the experience of reading the book this time around than the first time I read it.  The first time, I loved the book (obviously, or I wouldn’t have wanted to reread it!) but it took me awhile to get into the story and the first fifty pages or so were extremely confusing and frustrating for me.  Now that I know the eventual outcome of the story, the beginning sections are SO much more interesting and full of rich details that I didn’t pick up on the first time around.  Reading it again is just reminding me of what an absolute genius Russell is and how much I appreciate the amazingness that is The Sparrow.

2.  This book is set in a not-so-distant future in which the balance of world power has shifted from the United States to Japan. Poverty, indentured servitude, ghettos, and “future brokers” are common. Based on this projected future, would you classify this novel as dystopian? Do you think this future is a real possibility based on where the world is today?

The first time I read the book, I completely missed the whole Japan thing.  I’m seeing it more this time, but I definitely haven’t been hit over the face with it.  I don’t think that the book is exactly a dystopian because the world these characters are residing in isn’t too far from our own in terms of our daily experiences.  There hasn’t been some huge catastrophic event that changed everything, which is in my experience what usually provides the setting for dystopian novels.  But I do think some of what is portrayed in the novel is possible at some point in our near future.  The situation with Sofia seems not outside the realm of possibilities for our world, and it’s no secret that the poor countries of the world are just getting poorer, so the increased poverty and indentured servitude of The Sparrow isn’t far from life in some places now.

3.  From the beginning of the book we know that Something Bad happened during the mission but it takes until almost the end of the book for the reader to get the whole story. Do you think the author built the suspense to the perfect pitch or do you feel that she drew it out too long?

I’m only about a third of the way through right now, but I remember thinking the first time I read the book that the suspense was perfect.  Even now, I’m sad reading parts because I know A Bad Thing will happen to these characters that I’m falling in love with all over again.  But every time I pick up the book, I’m on the edge of my seat with anticipation, so I definitely think that the suspense is about as perfect as it can get.

4.  If you’ve gotten to the end, was the final truth one you expected or were you taken by surprise?

I haven’t gotten to the end this time, but I remember when I read it the first time that I kinda had to read it a couple of times to let everything sink in.  But I wasn’t totally surprised – it was kind of alluded to throughout the book and I had imagined a thousand different scenarios before getting to that final scene.

5.  Many people, in times of crises, ask how God can let bad things happen to good people. If someone asked you this, what would be your response? How do you think the author is choosing to answer that question in this book?

I ask myself that question all the time, and I absolutely do not have an answer.  Wouldn’t the world be a lot easier if we did have an answer?  Having read the entire book several years ago and without good memory of all the details, I don’t know how she’s answering that in the book.  Something about the greater good maybe?  That our suffering has a purpose, that we suffer in order for someone else to not suffer, or for some other problem to be solved, or for a larger group of people to be bettered in some way?  But I really can’t say.

I can’t wait to finish this amazing book!  Look for my review towards the end of the month.