Mass Mothering

A People 'Best Book of February'
A haunting, indelible novel of collective grief, resistance, and the radical, life-affirming virtue of testimony

A. is an amateur translator. Adrift and burdened by debt following a medical trauma, her nights are spent on the dance floor. There, she encounters N. Among N.’s meagre possessions, A. comes across a book about an unnamed town of disappearing boys. The book, Field Notes, documents a community of mothers who assemble to mourn their missing sons. 

When a near-assault stuns A. out of her inertia, she takes off for the city where Field Notes was written in search of its author and the end of the story. But, A’s digging leads her instead to the traces of a murdered poet, and a legacy that will intersect unexpectedly and pivotally with her own life. 

Poignant and profoundly humane, Mass Mothering is a story of the mutuality of grief, the shattering force of a mother’s love, and the aftershocks of violence in a globalised era.