ALU

Not everybody is a mother, but everybody has one. This collection of titles new and old will bring you a newfound appreciation for your mom this Mother’s Day. Read this novel, play, poetry collection, and graphic biography, then get to work on that macaroni art card.This brand-new book from Broken Social Scene fiction finalist Hollie Adams is a decidedly unapologetic look at how we cope when our mothers are gone. Protagonist Carrie, a mother herself, opts for office passive-aggressiveness and copious amounts of wine – well, she steps off of the path of the five stages of grief, we’ll say.When a mother is the default tie that holds a family together, what happens when she can’t? This play, winner of the Prism/UBC Creative Writing Department Award in 2001, is about a family struggling to cope in the wake of a terrible accident that leaves their mother without a memory. Su Croll’s second poetry collection delves into the maternal experience – the want for children, the pain of labour, the twin frustration and joy of child-rearing. Set in both urban and wild Alberta, Blood Mother opens a dialogue into how mothers can represent themselves, when language alone hardly seems enough. This sparsely-drawn graphic memoir powerfully depicts the heartbreaking transformation of a brilliant woman succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease, through the eyes of her daughter. Tangles speaks to the points of light we find in horrible circumstances, and the unbreakable bonds between family members in their spite.So, there you have it. Happy Mother’s Day, fellow children!