When a sex worker calls Kim a lady who lunches, she captures in a single phrase the distance between two women's lives and the hidden stories that rise to the surface when ghosts are captured on camera. It is the perfect summary of a novel about women who carry far more than they ever allow the world to see.

Helen Winslow Black's SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME is a story of mothers and their children, of the questions women ask and the choices they make. Kim is a lawyer who leaves a bad marriage to find a good one, builds her life around motherhood, navigates a vengeful ex-husband, and tries to make sense of her sharp-tongued mother, Bobbie, while caring for her daughter. Black captures Bobbie's acidic wit with precision ("'Shy? Maybe,' Bobbie remarked acidly. 'I think she was just scared of you.' She finished her lunch and pulled out her knitting”) in a narrative that's conversational and deeply character driven. Black relies heavily on subtext; a character like Karen absently moving a napkin "as though it were a Ouija planchette" tells us everything we need to know about her inner world. The prose shifts between tension and lightness with confidence, placing the reader directly inside the atmosphere of Kim’s world.

Kim embodies multiple identities: an abused woman whose story was denied, a childhood philosopher seeking to understand the world, a musician, a cherished wife, a mother, and a lawyer who re-entered the bar after years of raising children. Yet the familial roles prove perhaps the hardest to carry. Black doesn't always linger on the painful moments: Kim trying to share her abuse with her ex-husband's new wife, or her current husband defining her as the perfect mother for his children (rather than a person in her own right). It would have been helpful to see Kim question this as a deeper social message, but she doesn't. These scenes arrive and pass quickly, and for a reader without feminist insights, they might not land with the required weight.

SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME is a suburban novel written for women who are mothers, who work to get life right inside the complex gender roles they navigate, and who examine the songs and stories handed down from their mothers before reworking them for their daughters. It’s poignant, melancholic, and written with an emotional depth that lingers.

Helen Winslow Black's SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME is a powerful novel about the weight women carry as daughters, mothers, and wives.

~ Nicci Attfield for IndieReader