There are so many ways to be a mother that I don’t know how lexicographers managed to come up with a definition. I suppose one could be very bare bones about it, but limiting “mother” to someone who gives birth to a child doesn’t take into account adoption, fostering, or found families. Traditional definitions presume a lot about sex and gender. They also don’t account for all the ways that mothers can be good or bad. That’s where literature takes over, I suppose, because it can sometimes take a 300 page novel like Faith Merino’s heartbreaking Cormorant Lake to define what “mother” can mean.
Evelyn is a mother who doesn’t fit the traditional definition of a mother. In fairness, none of the other women in this book is a particularly good example of motherhood. Evelyn comes to her version of motherhood in a way that most would consider a crime. The bare bones definition would that Evelyn stole two little girls from their biological mother. Other details are more important, I think. The biological mother was a drug addict who left her children alone, once for an entire year. Evelyn forbears until, one day when she arrives to check on the girls, she finds the youngest unsupervised in a bath and no sign of the mother anywhere. The sight of the little girl, little more than a toddler, moments away from drowning makes Evelyn snap. She takes the girls and heads for her not-biological mother Nan’s crumbling house in Cormorant Lake, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
From this surprising beginning, Cormorant Lake dives into the wrenching stories of Evelyn and Nan. We learn how Evelyn was once abandoned by her own biological mother and grew almost feral. We learn why Nan is so willing to take in children who lost their mothers—and why she is haunted by ghosts only she can see. Seeing these two women turn themselves into mothers for neglected children got me to thinking about the duty that mothers (however they become mothers) owe to their children and what children owe to the people who birthed them and raised them (not always the same mothers). I had to examine my feelings about Evelyn’s and the girls’ biological mothers. I’ll admit that I was repelled by women who ran away from their responsibilities to their children. This realization really hit me when I saw Evelyn start to pull away from the girls. I didn’t blame Evelyn as much as I blamed the other neglectful mothers because she wasn’t legally or biologically tied to the girls she kidnapped/saved—yet she chose to become a mother where it’s possible that neither the girls’ biological mother or Evelyn’s own might have consciously made the decision to become mothers.
Cormorant Lake is a fascinating read. It’s also kind of a sneaky one. Evelyn and Nan live so close to the bone that it was easy to get lost in their worries about feeding and caring for Evelyn’s girls or the possible legal repercussions of Evelyn’s kidnapping or all the gossip swirling around the town. The bigger issues about mothers and motherhood will sneak up readers. I haven’t stopped thinking about this book even though I finished it days ago. I expect that I will be thinking about Cormorant Lake for a long time.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss for review consideration.
Notes for Bibliotherapeutic Use: Recommend to readers who have complicated relationships with their mothers.
I do enjoy books that raise issues which make you think. This sounds like one of them.