Name: MOTHERTHING.
Rating: 3.459677419354839 (62 reviews)
ISBN: 9781838957773

AINSLIE. HOGARTH

MOTHERTHING.

sani

Maybe touching someone is the kindest thing you can do; making a person feel like it’s okay to touch them, that they’re touchable and not disgusting, is the easiest and best way to make a person feel good in the world.

Eating, love's natural, bloody conclusion that can never, ever be indulged, because then the thing you love is destroyed. And maybe not destroying the thing you love, resisting that impulse, is the highest expression of love.

Ainslie Hogarth

Abby Lamb has done it. She's found the Great Good in her husband, Ralph, and together they will start a family and put all the darkness in her childhood to rest. But then the Lambs move in with Ralph's mother, Laura, whose depression has made it impossible for her to live on her own. She's venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, who has a complicated understanding of motherhood given the way her own, now-estranged, mother raised her. When Laura takes her own life, her ghost starts to haunt Abby and Ralph in very different ways. Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is being terrorized by a force intent on taking everything she loves away from her. With everything on the line, Abby must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to prove her adoration to Ralph and break Laura's hold on the family for good.

Motherthing

michelle

<blockquote>“Being inseparable from Ralph felt like something I'd been missing from the chemistry of my marrow, a bond that I could never have with her, that might have made everything different. A real live Couchy Motherthing, finally making me whole and real and connected to the rest of the world.” </blockquote>

erin

my one question is: all that for a MAN? when i saw the sentence that went like, she was stopped by me and forced to use her worth­less, wicked life to save one of the greatest men in the en­tire world, i wanted to die. ralph was boring, stupid, and also at the end, <spoiler>he turned out to be a total fucking creep because he enjoyed abby acting like a dead corpse during sex, </spoiler> and that's something i can't get past. it's too weird, and it made me want to vomit. and while we're on the topic of vomit, i want to ask whether it was necessary to talk about shit, feces, and diarrhea so many times. who gives a shit. pun not intended. 
when i saw the direction the book was going in, i was hoping there would be some commentary on the pressures of womanhood but. no. abby loves being a tradwife and a fucking freak. i can excuse <spoiler>cannibalism</spoiler> but not being a total dickmatized loser (derogatory) for a man. 

the narration was a mess too. i know it was (hopefully) on purpose, but those chapters written like a script only took you out of the story. they felt more like an outline than an actual chapter. and, to make the matters worse, this was not a horror book, and there were absolutely no hauntings. disappointing.

So good and so odd and I loved it and I hated it 

Kendall Lobdell

Honestly the jellied salmon was worse than the cannibalism to me. 

Hannah Bateman

Honestly the jellied salmon was worse than the cannibalism to me. 

Go off queen I guess

annalyse! 

Patrick Book

Ryan Mateyk

A gripping, gleeful horror tale. Follow Abby as she works through her family trauma with... unique techniques.

Liyah 🤎

Great spooky read! The narration was quick and incisive and I loved when it switched to stage directions. A very fun gory read. I will say the ending was slightly lack luster. It felt like a controlled explosion versus all hell breaking loose but! it was a fun ride the entire time.

look i have mommy issues as much as the next guy but Jesus Christ 

tbh i was really looking forward to this book so it was a pretty disappointing read, normally i can an enjoy horror as a metaphor for mental illness but when it’s mental illness for the sake of horror? meh.

Cici Pearson

look i have mommy issues as much as the next guy but Jesus Christ 

tbh i was really looking forward to this book so it was a pretty disappointing read, normally i can an enjoy horror as a metaphor for mental illness but when it’s mental illness for the sake of horror? meh.

Molly M

forgot to say this before but really not a fan of how this book makes people with bpd seem necessarily evil

Nova

this was not as metaphorical as i thought it would be #bamboozled #shocked #notdismayed

i went into this being haha where the mommy issues bitches at and came out of it like wow now that's insanity i cannot compare (nor compete because i Do Not want to). i was in a big reading slump (haven't rlly finished anything since july 2022) and this took me more than a month to finish, but the last 30-40% i sped run everything because that's when things started to pick up for me.

can't tell what i don't like that i'm not giving it 5 stars, probably the pacing in the first half? i do like the occasional change to screenplay (?) format whenever abby, the mc, experiences things outside her body. it makes me feel her alienation.


  motherthing was about women's relationship with men as much as it is with their mothers
, and it put into words a lot of things related to it that was only vague concepts in my head. not sure if this will be a reread or not in the future, but i did enjoy reading it! will recommend to anyone in search of unsettling horror fiction with a delusional mc + dead mother-in-law hauntings.

Isabella 

this book is so messed up. very unreliable and unhinged character. i loved it. wouldn't really mark this as horror tho.

Motherthing made my jaw slowly drop as we progressed through the book. Hogarth is a truly captivating writer, with truly unique ideas. Her writing made you feel uncomfortable, which added to the context of the story. Whilst the story itself wasn’t my cup of tea I can recognise that this novel is great for those looking for a unique read.

Charlotte Squire

it's like the opposite of gone girl but also the same

envie,

catalina

Keely Calagos

What is the literary horror equivalent to magical realism? Because that is this. 

This was the most subtly grotesque and disturbing masterpiece. The audiobook version was fantastic... 

More thoughts to come because it's still sinking in...

4.5 rounded up to 5.

big ab

this is so wild and so funny. but also really smart. a really great palette cleanser because it’s so unique to everything else i normally read. also love how mother-in-laws are the universal final boss in everyone’s story.

Grace M

“I bubble again with blinding-hot, spine-severing cumshitkill.”
How am I supposed to read a line as perfect as that and not immediately become obsessed?
I fell for this book from the first page, no exaggeration. Motherthing is tremendously hilarious, which was very unexpected considering the book starts off with a suicide. The humor is layered with macabre horror that genuinely had me unnerved while reading in a dark room. I have never encountered anything quite like this book and I don’t think I ever will again. What a gem.

Grabbed this during a 2-for-1 sale for Spooky Season, coincidentally didn’t realize that I also had NetGalley waiting on a review (sorry)! It’s a little different as a domestic horror, but I enjoyed. The narration is well done, and the character’s voice comes to life. 

First and foremost, this is kind of a dark comedy. Or at the very least, the artistic voice comes across as funny. A lot of the analogies and metaphors are witty, and something I have never quite achieved in my own writing. 

In a way, I would liken this to a fictional “I’m Glad My Mom Died” as it shows a lot of the darker sides of motherhood: abuse, obsession, and dysfunction. It also goes into depression and delusion in a very atmospheric way. 

Unfortunately the end did lose me for a bit, which is when it was supposed to be building to climax, but it did end with quite the surprise. Personally a 3/5*, a fun one.

C. J. Daley 

Grabbed this during a 2-for-1 sale for Spooky Season, coincidentally didn’t realize that I also had NetGalley waiting on a review (sorry)! It’s a little different as a domestic horror, but I enjoyed. The narration is well done, and the character’s voice comes to life. 

First and foremost, this is kind of a dark comedy. Or at the very least, the artistic voice comes across as funny. A lot of the analogies and metaphors are witty, and something I have never quite achieved in my own writing. 

In a way, I would liken this to a fictional “I’m Glad My Mom Died” as it shows a lot of the darker sides of motherhood: abuse, obsession, and dysfunction. It also goes into depression and delusion in a very atmospheric way. 

Unfortunately the end did lose me for a bit, which is when it was supposed to be building to climax, but it did end with quite the surprise. Personally a 3/5*, a fun one.

And I absolutely love the cover!

tori

holy shit, this book was truly fantastic from start to finish 

belle

tamer than I was anticipating. I was anticipating a fresh and clever ghost story, but got more of the narrator’s stream-of-consciousness throughout. I guess that’s the point though?

Catherine Coronado

‘Motherthing’ is justice for all daughters-in-law scorned. This book left me drunk with morbid satisfaction. Absolutely recommend if you have the stomach for it.

sybil

Maggie

A clever, disturbing read that made me laugh out loud and go a little nauseous. After the death of her mother-in-law, Abby seeks to pull her husband Ralph out of his depression, save her marriage, start a family, and rid their home of her mother-in-law’s ghost. We learn more about Abby throughout the book, following her relationship with her own mother, a childhood comfort couch she called “motherthing,” and a patient she works with who has taken on a mother role in Abby’s mind. With themes of delusion, obsession, trauma, and sacrifice, this book is perfect for anyone interested in the recent “unhinged woman narrator” trend.

This book is for fans of Touch of Jen and Nightbitch, two of my favorite books this year. And, for those involved in the recent book review discourse- this book has dark themes, gross humor, a amultitude of violence- I hate to say, but it’s like Ottessa Moshfegh with more charm and less vitriol towards fat people.

I loved the subtlety used in divulging Abby’s backstory- it felt realistic and not overwrought, which left room for the devastation the information deserved. Hogarth’s narrator is unreliable and (somehow) charming. I was throughly impressed with this new take on a the “monster-in-law” trope, which seems to take generational trauma into consideration.

MOTHERTHING.

Reviews

Highlights