Word: motherkind
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...about the same time she learns that her mother, approaching 60, has been told she has inoperable lung cancer. This juxtaposition of a birth and a death foretold offers some fairly obvious ironies and occasions for pathos, almost all of which Jayne Anne Phillips avoids in her third novel, MotherKind (Knopf; 291 pages; $24). Instead of ruminating on the metaphysical significance of her premise and the story that springs from it, Phillips concentrates on the day-to-day details of ordinary existence suddenly afflicted with extraordinary pressures and the conflicting tugs of joy and grief...
...born after 36 hours of labor on a Christmas morning. "It's amazing," Katherine tells her daughter, "how nature slaps women with everything at once--you take care of a new baby 24 hours a day, just when you're most exhausted." For a fee, a local firm called MotherKind provides cooking and cleaning and moral support for the new mother's first few weeks. Then, "MotherKind was finished; Kate herself was MotherKind...
...biscuits carefully broken up in just enough milk to make them edible) and All-Bran for Katherine (with Sweet'n Low because of her diabetes, half a banana, whole milk to encourage weight maintenance)." This is probably too much of a good thing. For the most part, though, MotherKind marshals details in a passionate but indirect evocation of loss...
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