Author Picks: 5 Mum-Noir Books Deftly Exploring Motherhood

This addictive thriller, from husband-and-wife writing team Ellery Lloyd, is about an influencer mum whose real life is nothing like the image she portrays online. Emmy Jackson has amassed a million followers by making out that her “Mamabare” account offers an unfiltered view of her life with three-year-old Coco and newborn Bear, but in truth, Emmy’s problems go way beyond getting Bear to sleep and Coco to eat her vegetables. Not only is their goldfish-bowl existence starting to freak out her author husband Dan—struggling to complete his difficult second novel—but someone is posting stolen photographs of their private family moments and threatening to undermine their perfect life for good. PEOPLE LIKE HER is wonderfully paced and hugely original, with brilliantly drawn characters. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be up late into the night finishing it (and deleting your social media the moment you have!).

“The women in our family, we’re different,” Blythe Connor announces at the start of Ashley Audrain’s critically acclaimed novel, THE PUSH, which plays on some of the darkest fears of motherhood. Despite her determination not to allow her terrible family history to prevent her being a good mother to Violet, Blythe finds she cannot escape the conviction that there is something wrong with her young daughter. But, with her husband insistent she is imagining it, Blythe is forced to ask if the problem is really with her—or if her judgment can even be trusted at all. Interweaving the stories of four generations of women in Blythe’s family, THE PUSH is at once a hugely addictive read and a deeply uncomfortable delve into the legacy of maternal love and neglect, grief, and mental illness.

Sarah Vaughan’s haunting portrait of a mother placed under investigation after her baby sustains a suspicious injury opens with a horribly recognizable scene: a newborn baby that will not stop crying, and a mother pushed to her limits. When the same mother, Jess, arrives at her local hospital with an injured baby Betsey, the doctor on duty is her friend Liz, whom she met at prenatal class. Betsey has a fractured skull, and Liz’s colleagues feel the incident is suspicious. But Liz knows Jess is a good mother—an almost perfect mother, in fact. She knows she would never do anything to harm her baby. Doesn’t she? As dark secrets from the past begin to emerge, the friendship between the two mothers is pushed to the breaking point. A brilliant and deeply unsettling read.

Maternity-leave career paranoia is the theme of Harriet Walker’s debut THE NEW GIRL, in which journalist Margot leaves her enviable job to have a baby and is replaced by ambitious Maggie, who starts apparently trying to outdo her at every turn. Meanwhile, Margot’s joy at her new motherhood is tinged with loneliness and heartbreak: her plans to share her maternity leave with her lifelong friend, Winnie, have been cruelly destroyed by Winnie’s loss of her newborn son. When an anonymous online troll starts mocking Margot and threatening to expose a dark secret from her past, Margot’s unease spirals into frightening paranoia. Walker is as utterly brilliant in her observations of female friendship as she is at weaving a fast-paced thriller with a sucker-punch twist. I loved it.

In this dystopian and deeply moving novel—which has drawn comparisons to Margaret Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE—exhausted single mother Frida ends up at a “re-educational school” for flawed mothers after she is caught poorly leaving toddler, Harriet, alone at home after falling behind at work. At the school, the mothers are charged with caring for sentient dolls—their every look, statement and hug judged by others. “All the more terrifying because it edges so close to reality,” according to one review of the book, THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS is both a propulsive read and a terrifying portrait of the societal judgment aimed at mothers everywhere, but particularly those who are not wealthy or white. 

GREENWICH PARK is out now!

Helen’s idyllic life—handsome architect husband, gorgeous Victorian house, and cherished baby on the way (after years of trying)—begins to change the day she attends her first prenatal class and meets Rachel, an unpredictable single mother-to-be. Rachel doesn’t seem very maternal: she smokes, drinks, and professes little interest in parenthood. Still, Helen is drawn to her. Maybe Rachel just needs a friend. And to be honest, Helen’s a bit lonely herself. At least Rachel is fun to be with. She makes Helen laugh, invites her confidences, and distracts her from her fears. But her increasingly erratic behavior is unsettling. And Helen’s not the only one who’s noticed. Her friends and family begin to suspect that her strange new friend may be linked to their shared history in unexpected ways.