That Kind of Mother: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY:
Buzzfeed • The Boston Globe • The Millions • InStyle • Southern Living • Vogue • Popsugar • Kirkus • The Washington Post • Library Journal • Real Simple • NPR
"With his unerring eye for nuance and unsparing sense of irony, Rumaan Alam's second novel is both heartfelt and thought-provoking."
— Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
From the bestselling author of Leave the World Behind, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep
Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help—Priscilla Johnson—and begs her to come home with them as her son's nanny.
Priscilla's presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca's perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.
Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.
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Rumaan Alam. (2018). That Kind of Mother: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Rumaan Alam. 2018. That Kind of Mother: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Rumaan Alam, That Kind of Mother: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2018.
MLA Citation (style guide)Rumaan Alam. That Kind of Mother: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2018.
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Rumaan Alam is the author of the novels Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and the instant New York Times bestseller Leave the World Behind. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, and the New Republic, where he is a contributing editor. He studied writing at Oberlin College and lives in New York with his family.
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NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY:
Buzzfeed • The Boston Globe • The Millions • InStyle • Southern Living • Vogue • Popsugar • Kirkus • The Washington Post • Library Journal • Real Simple • NPR"With his unerring eye for nuance and unsparing sense of irony, Rumaan Alam's second novel is both heartfelt and thought-provoking."
— Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires EverywhereFrom the bestselling author of Leave the World Behind, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep
Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help—Priscilla Johnson—and begs her to come home with them as her son's nanny.
Priscilla's presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca's perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.
Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.- reviews
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"Riveting..an outstanding depiction of motherhood and cross-racial adoption...The tensions of privilege and identity are brilliantly set against the backdrop of wealthy American cities, and Alam's pacing is phenomenal...An astonishing book." — Washington Post
"That Kind of Mother's greatest triumph is its insistence on complicating the rescue narrative of transracial adoption without resorting to dogmatic indictments of its characters....the novel also reveals the extent to which Alam is attuned to the concerns and candor of women." — The Atlantic
"Laced with humor and remarkably rich in detail...thrills in its attention to nuance...Alam's generous rendering rings authentic." — Entertainment Weekly
"Alam's second novel, about two families brought together by the death of a beloved nanny, expertly and intrepidly blends topics of the zeitgeist, including race, privilege, and motherhood, without sacrificing elegant prose and signature wit." — Vogue.com
"Coming off his celebrated debut Rich and Pretty, Rumaan Alam's sophomore novel returns to themes of family and culture in a powerful tale of a white mother raising a black son." — Entertainment Weekly
"[Alam's] is a voice we want to read on just about every issue. In this novel, the issues he addresses are parenting, race, class, and privilege, and he explores these fraught topics with his trademark wit and sensitivity, never pandering or veering into cliche." — Nylon Magazine
"From [a] heartbreaking premise, Alam plumbs still more heartbreaking questions about the power and limitations of maternal love, and the implacable persistence of racial divides." — Huffington Post
"Alam explores questions [of race, class, and privilege] with exquisite tenderness, palpable detail, and excruciating empathy." — Marie Claire
"If you want something smart, relevant, and compassionate...pitch-perfect...quite special." — LitHub
"One of the glories of this novel, as it tracks Rebecca through 1999, is its compassionate exploration of individuals reaching across racial and class divides to create family." — BBC.com
""Absorbing... Alam poses important questions about race, privilege, and the nature of family" — Boston Globe
"That Kind of Mother is a thought-provoking story about what happens when a beloved nanny dies, leaving her own child motherless. Exploring themes of race, privilege, and family, Alam's second novel will leave you thinking about it long after finishing." — Popsugar
"Alam details Rebecca's transforming journey of motherhood and interracial adoption with delightful irony. Boundaries of family and friendship expand in this thought-provoking read, revealing universal truths about parenting." — Christian Science Monitor
"Alam's sharp narrative asides—lines like "Some percentage of the things she did for the children were actually for her"—carry such weight and truth that we trust his route toward the bigger question of the book: are we ever ready for the pain and joy that life delivers." — The Millions
"This is a thought-provoking story about family, race, and the bond between mothers." — Bookish
"This gorgeous book calls into question all our assumptions - about family and tribe, race and loyalty, privilege and paucity. Brave, sharp and empathetic, Rumaan Alam shows us motherhood as I've never...
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March 12, 2018
Alam’s second novel (following Rich and Pretty), an often incisive chronicle of an unconventional family, opens with the birth of poet Rebecca’s first child, Jacob. In the hospital, the awed and rather intimidated new mother meets a proverbial savior, a pregnant nursing consultant named Priscilla, who becomes Rebecca’s nanny. When Priscilla dies giving birth to her own child and her grown daughter, Cheryl, decides she cannot raise the child herself, the distraught and guilt-ridden Rebecca convinces her husband, Christopher, that they should adopt the child, a boy they name Andrew. Rebecca welcomes Cheryl into the life of her baby brother, but the husbands and parents of both Cheryl, who is black, and Rebecca, who is white, struggle to come to terms with the melding of the two families. Alam skillfully tackles issues of race and parenthood; in one searing scene, after Cheryl’s husband is stopped by the police, Cheryl begs the bemused Rebecca to let them talk with Andrew about the perils faced by black men in America. While Rebecca’s career as a prize-winning poet isn’t convincing, readers will empathize with the herculean effort Rebecca puts into her vocation as a parent. The novel offers a memorable depiction of a mother’s journey as her children grow and her marriage collapses.
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Starred review from March 1, 2018
Write what you know. This is one of the most common directives issued to writers, but Alam (Rich and Pretty, 2016) upends that old model in this quietly brilliant novel about motherhood, families, and race. Alam's protagonist, Rebecca Stone, unlike Alam, a gay man of Indian origin, is a white mother, yet his portrait is quite possibly the best peek at motherhood and its disorienting seesaw effects on a middle-class suburban woman that we have seen in a long while. Stone, the very definition of white privilege, is fumbling her way through motherhood when she makes an irrevocable, life-altering decision: to adopt a newly orphaned black baby. In narrating Rebecca's tale of gradual self-awareness, Alam's unerring yet unobtrusive eye asks uncomfortable questions: Can motherhood ever look beyond race? Can we learn to recognize the terrible blindness of our respective cultural perspectives? Even in seeking inspiration from Princess Diana, Rebecca proves to be an effective everywoman, quietly screaming at the cacophony that accompanies motherhood's thematic repetitions, while trying to do right by her husband and her sons as she navigates the loaded landscape of parenting and race in America. A stunning accomplishment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
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April 15, 2018
As with his celebrated debut, Rich and Pretty, Alam takes a women's-eye view to give us a larger picture. Panicked about raising her baby, first-time white mother Rebecca invites understanding African American hospital staffer Priscilla to be her nanny. Rebecca, who quickly comes to see her own advantaged position, takes the next step when Priscilla dies in childbirth by adopting her son. But being the white mother of a black child has consequences. With a 100,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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April 15, 2018
New mother and accomplished young poet Rebecca Stone, who is white, gives birth to Jacob in the 1980s. Married to Christopher, a British diplomat stationed in Washington, DC, she has a life rich with government intrigue and more than a little Princess Diana-watching. When Rebecca bonds with Priscilla Johnson, her breastfeeding coach, who is black, and brings her into the home for more help, the household is thrown into a shocking crisis. Already a mother to Cheryl, fortyish Priscilla is once again pregnant and tragically dies in childbirth. Overwhelmed by grief and the impending arrival of their own child, Cheryl and her husband agree to Rebecca's wish that Priscilla's baby Andrew join the Stone family, first on a temporary basis and then permanently through adoption. VERDICT Alam's deeply sensitive and provocative second novel (after Rich and Pretty) authentically touches on themes front and center in today's discourse--white privilege, the rocky path of good intentions, racial divides, and the profoundly intimate details of motherhood and of accomplished women finding their way in a man's world. [See Prepub Alert, 11/6/17.]--Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from March 15, 2018
This story about a white woman who adopts her black nanny's son burrows deep into issues of race, class, and the nature of family.Rebecca Stone is the attractive wife of a British diplomat, a talented poet, an admirer of Princess Diana (the book is set in the late 1980s and '90s), the sort of person who is equally adept at both attending and hosting parties. She lives in a tastefully decorated house in Washington, D.C.; wears designer clothes; drives a Volvo; cooks delicious, complex meals in her well-appointed kitchen. In short, she is, among other attributes, rich and pretty--which happens to be the title of Alam's well-received 2016 debut novel. With this, his second book, Alam further demonstrates his ability to write remarkably convincingly from a woman's perspective, credibly capturing even the particulars of childbirth and breast-feeding, not to mention the emotional challenges of balancing motherhood and fulfilling work. When we first meet Rebecca, she is about to give birth to a son, Jacob, an event that leads to a connection with a hospital breast-feeding consultant named Priscilla Johnson, who will become Jacob's nanny. Rebecca is white; Priscilla is black. But their relationship is far more nuanced than those bare facts may lead you to expect, and their story plays out in unpredictable ways. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca instinctively moves to adopt her newborn son, a decision that will change Rebecca's life, her family, and her view of the world. Here Alam proves he is a writer brave and empathetic enough not only to look at life from the perspective of another gender and era, but also to boldly dive in and explore controversial topics, posing questions about the way we treat one another and the challenges of overcoming preconceptions. Digging through to uncomfortable truths, he emerges squarely on the side of hope.With his second novel, Alam cements his status as that kind of writer: insightful, intrepid, and truly impressive.COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY:
Buzzfeed • The Boston Globe • The Millions • InStyle • Southern Living • Vogue • Popsugar • Kirkus • The Washington Post • Library Journal • Real Simple • NPR"With his unerring eye for nuance and unsparing sense of irony, Rumaan Alam's second novel is both heartfelt and thought-provoking."
— Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires EverywhereFrom the bestselling author of Leave the World Behind, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep
Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital...
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