Mother's Day 2023 | Modern family is at the heart of 2 International Booker shortlisted books

These stories ask what motherly love looks like in the modern day with its modern challenges. (Photo: Daria Obymaha via Pexels)

This year, two novels on the International Booker shortlist, written and translated by women, explore the choice of motherhood and its consequences in the modern age with its new set of challenges. Still Born, written by Guadalupe Nettel and translated by Rosalind Harvey, is a story of two friends. An unflinching portrait of motherhood, it showcases the moral complexities of parenting. On the other hand, Eva Baltasar’s Boulder, translated by Julia Sanches, describes the inner life of a queer couple in which one woman decides to have a child while the other remains opposed to it and suffers silently. These novels explore the nuances and modern challenges of motherhood. When patriarchy no longer rules the instincts of women, what do they come to desire?

Toni Morrison, a writer whose books top the lists of the most banned books in America, was quoted in a Lithub article as saying that she saw becoming a mother not as the reluctant acceptance of an embarrassing role she’d been assigned by some powerful man, but “the most liberating thing that ever happened to me”. Motherhood can be an imprisoning experience for many women, as Rachel Cusk writes in A Life’s Work. However, many women find it intensely liberating and radical. Such is the case with Boulder’s lover Samsa. Samsa becomes a flawless goddess with pregnancy and the birth of her daughter.

Boulder is a story of transformations - of the transformative power of love. The narrator, nicknamed Boulder, was an explorer before she met Samsa, the woman she falls in love with. Boulder leaves her life of detachment and freedom to move to Iceland with Samsa. She suffers silently when Samsa decides to have a child. Somewhere along the way, the settling down kills the spark of passion between Boulder and Samsa as pregnancy grips Samsa and transforms her into someone else.

However, repulsed by heteronormativity and children, Boulder comes to love her daughter in her own way. She doesn’t become the traditional mother many would want her to be. But that’s the transformative power of her baby girl that changes Boulder into someone who looks forward to those moments when she is alone with the baby. These moments carry her through the darker days when she feels the isolation that she is so used to.

Textures, tastes, and smells come together to form electrically charged prose and tell an unforgettable story of two very different mothers who love each other and love their daughter, both in their own ways. This story asks what motherly love looks like in the modern day with its modern challenges. With writing that is raw and honest, Baltasar shows us what queer motherhood looks like.

Still Born

On the other hand, Still Born explores how the choice of motherhood can impact the bonds women form in their lifetime. It is the story of two women, Alina and Laura, who made a pact never to have children but their lives diverge from that point as Alina decides that she wants a child while Laura takes the drastic step of getting sterilized. Later, Alina finds herself anxiously wanting motherhood at all costs as she goes through expensive fertility treatments, and Laura becomes an unnatural caretaker of her neighbour’s son.

Alina’s relationship with her mother throws a shadow on her choices when she makes a pact not to have children. She later admits that she wanted to avoid motherhood to escape the miseries of her own mother. The two friends represent how divided women are in their ideas of motherhood- they either want it at all costs or they are repulsed by just the thought of it. What is it about motherhood that elicits such a strong response in women?

Still Born interrogates the desire for motherhood. It questions the moral complexities of motherhood and caretaking.

Nettel shows us the inner turmoil of women faced with the choice to terminate pregnancies where the foetus is likely to be born with an incurable illness. Alina’s daughter is born with a rare genetic disorder that could kill her at any moment. There are moments when Alina wishes for an escape from her motherhood.

Nettel also shows how motherhood is radically different from fatherhood. Women’s bodies are forever altered by the event of pregnancy which also takes away the agency of their bodies. This novel comes at a time when countries have exploitative abortion laws that force women to carry their pregnancies to term against their wishes.

A painfully poignant novel, Still Born explores mothers - biological and unnatural - and how they are different from one another. Writing about the ambivalences of motherhood is not an easy task, but Nettel does it with beautiful and heart-touching prose. A trigger warning is necessary at this point as the author explores life and death in motherhood - Alina could lose her daughter at any point, and Laura’s neighbour has to helplessly go through a separation from her son. What Still Born offers in return is solidarity to women and mothers everywhere.