Literary Lesbians

Reading group this month was a little overshadowed by the festival of Ange. Lots of people turned up for dinner to celebrate her birthday, but not much discussion took place about the book! Sal, Tina, Amanda, Ange, Sam and Jude had read the book. Shell, Laura and Nai hadn’t read the book but came along anyway. Lynnie dropped in to say hello as well. We thought she was out on a hot date (embarrassingly at the same restaurant where we all turned up for reading group) but she denied this!

Sal’s initial impression of the book was that she didn’t like the use of “Mom” which made her feel that the book was very Americanised. She also questioned whether we, as readers, started to turn away from Mom because her son Nick did. She noted that Nick had more of a relationship with his Mom at the start.

Jude pointed out that Mom’s voice was completely silenced and she was kind of invisible in the story. Jude also felt that Mom completely shut down because she was exhausted, but Nick couldn’t see that because he was an egocentric 13 year old.

We all agreed that it was terrible that Mom denied Nick contact with Jo.

Sal thought it was beautiful that Nick called his non-biological mother his real Mom. She also really enjoyed the book for its child’s perspective on having same-sex parents.

Jude felt that they were isolated as a family and that there was no sense of community.

Tina really liked the part of the book where they were spitting watermelon pips. She didn’t like the fact that Jo made Nick lie to Mom. Tina didn’t like Mom at all and thought she was manipulative. Jude and Sam disagreed and said that they empathised with Mom.

Tina also pointed out that when Nick let the fish die, it was like a part of him died. Sam was amused by him dying all his clothes black, but Tina thought that was manipulative.