Mothered by Zoje Stage

​I’ve read the author’s Wonderland, so I sort of knew what to expect – a literary atmospheric slow-boiler. This one certainly was more of the same, although with a distinctly 2020 flavor to it. Perhaps too much so for it seems to tip over an already bleak depressing production into this-way-madness-lies territory.
Lockdown is terrible enough but more so for Grace whose estranged mother comes to stay with her. Grace was just enjoying her newly purchased place and now she has to share it. Not the thing she can say no to, being in dire financial straits due to underemployment, so she agrees.
Grace and her mother do not get along and haven’t in ages. Grace had a twin once, her mother’s favorite, a mean-spirited disabled girl who died at eleven.
Now Grace is all alone. No love interests, nothing but a gay best friend and sporadic work for company. Well, that and her passion for catfishing, which she enjoys greatly and has been doing for years.
Grace’s mother arrives seemingly determined to turn a new leaf in their relationship, but they are simply too different as people to get along properly. Soon, Grace’s life gets taken over by vividly potent hyper-realistic nightmares that dredge up the ugliest times of her past.
All of that is mirrored by the nightmarish reality outside.
You can kind of see which way it’s going but you can’t look away – a slow-motion car crash of a mother/daughter relationship.
Engaging in its own right, but with no really likeable characters and it being so terribly dark and depressing, it’s difficult to outright recommend. This book is a waking nightmare, is an ode to nightmares. Smothered / mothered – all too frighteningly.
Trippy, demented, disturbing – this one is for the toughest fans of dark psychological fiction.
Thanks Netgalley.