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In a Country of Mothers

3.47 of 5 stars 3.47 · rating details · 564 ratings · 50 reviews

No relationship is more charged than that between a psychotherapist and her patient—unless it is the relationship between a mother and her daughter. This disturbing literary thriller explores what happens when the line between those relationships blurs.

Jody Goodman enters psychotherapy with questions of career and love on her mind. But Claire Roth, her therapist, keeps cha...more

Paperback, 288 pages

Published April 5th 1994 by Vintage (first published 1993)

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Oct 27, 2010 SmarterLilac rated it 2 of 5 stars

As a general rule, I hate A.M. Holmes. I mean, I get what she's trying to do, ('Are these allegories? Bad fiction? Or am I trying to say that life is so godawful that when you write about it 'realistically' it reads like a really, really terrible novel?') but it comes across to me as atrocious writing. This one gets points for addressing a lot of the truly horrific misogynist practices left in the world, even if it does so in poorly crafted prose.

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Sep 26, 2012 Brittany M. rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: couldn-t-finish

I wasn't able to finish this. I don't mind a book that makes me feel uncomfortable--sometimes that can be good. Homes often writes about the awkward, the squeamish, and I have liked a few of her other (later?) books. There's plenty about this novel that would typically make me squirm, like the breach of the ever sensitive client/mental health practitioner relationship, or the trope of the "ruined woman" post-abortion/adoption--both are present here. Instead of effectively working the discomfort...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Edward S. Portman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In un paese di madri è un libro che quando inizi a leggere dentro di te dici: si, va bene, è un libro normale, niente di più e niente di meno. E quando finisci questo pensiero ti accorgi di avere già divorato chissà quante pagine senza neppure rendertene conto, scivolato via sopra la storia senza alcun tipo di trauma. La narrazione procede tranquilla in un’alternanza di terza persona soggettiva, tra le due protagoniste, delineando una prima parte davvero davvero molto bella. Se A. M. Homes riusc...more In un paese di madri è un libro che quando inizi a leggere dentro di te dici: si, va bene, è un libro normale, niente di più e niente di meno. E quando finisci questo pensiero ti accorgi di avere già divorato chissà quante pagine senza neppure rendertene conto, scivolato via sopra la storia senza alcun tipo di trauma. La narrazione procede tranquilla in un’alternanza di terza persona soggettiva, tra le due protagoniste, delineando una prima parte davvero davvero molto bella. Se A. M. Homes riuscisse a mantenere le vicende - non tanto la narrazione che rimane comunque snella - a un livello come in questa prima parte saremmo di fronte a un libro affascinante e ricco di profondità, ma qualcosa si perdere e questa rimane solo una possibilità, seppure In un paese di madre rimanga ugualmente un buon libro.
Dopo la prima parte si ha la sensazione che sia successo qualcosa a Jody, la protagonista più giovane, qualcosa che la cambia abbastanza radicalmente ma che l’autrice non ci vuole dire, magari solo suggerire, ma questo suggerimento non arriva in modo netto, o leggero, come dovrebbe: non arriva. Ti ritrovi perciò con un personaggio che ha le fondamenta di uno di cui avevi fatto la conoscenza in precedenza, e i contorni di uno quasi del tutto nuovo che agisce in modo diverso a quanto ti aspetteresti.
Diverso il discorso su Claire, l’altra protagonista, con la quale ti puoi arrabbiare per le azione e le scelte che fa ma che puoi comunque in un certo modo giustificare: il suo cambiamento, che potrebbe essere visto come il risultato del transfert di Jody (sua paziente) a se stessa (psicologa di Jody), è più graduale, meno repentino ed è percepito come una sfumatura mentre per Jody è più uno scatto, un interruttore che si è acceso o si è spento.
Forse non è un caso se le parti migliori del libro (la prima e una reminiscenza della terza) siano quelle durante le quali sono presenti due psicologhi e il secondo di questi analizzi, in modo diretto (nella prima parte) o in modo indiretto (nella terza) le azioni di Claire. Sarebbe un aspetto che avrebbe meritato più approfondimento, evitando magari di introdurre personaggi secondari quali per esempio l’amica di Jody. Peccato sarebbe stato un libro diverso e magari migliore.(less)

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Jul 30, 2012 Orsodimondo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: americana

DOMANDE SENZA RISPOSTA
Un buon libro americano, con il giusto rispetto del lettore, la voglia di comunicare e raccontare una storia. Struttura solida, a suo modo classica, niente di originale: neppure l'alternanza di punti di vista, la giovane Jody e l'adulta Claire, colpisce come nuova.
C'è dietro molta frequentazione di sale cinematografiche, il che non è certo un male.
A un certo punto mi sono perso dei passaggi psicologici del personaggio giovane, ma credo se li sia persi Homes per prima: sec...more

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Sep 06, 2009 El rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: late20th-centurylit

This is a frustrating story about a young woman, Jody, who makes an appointment with a new therapist, Claire Roth. They hit it off surprisingly well, in part because Jody tells of her adoption twenty-something years ago; Claire put a little girl up for adoption around that same time. As their relationship grows as client/therapist, Claire begins to have feelings for Jody that could be described as somewhat maternal, leaving Claire to begin to wonder if Jody was the child she had given up so many...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Marja rated it 3 of 5 stars

A. M. Homes's "In a country of mothers" is not a very likeable book. It starts off with a mediocre enough seeming story - one exploring the fantastically American institution of therapy as a white American middle class staple - with boring characters, and develops into a full-fledged thriller about a trauma-related obsession with a fantasy of motherhood. All the way through, Homes keeps her boring characters boring, but also adds a little unprofessionalism, violence, and dislikeability into the...more A. M. Homes's "In a country of mothers" is not a very likeable book. It starts off with a mediocre enough seeming story - one exploring the fantastically American institution of therapy as a white American middle class staple - with boring characters, and develops into a full-fledged thriller about a trauma-related obsession with a fantasy of motherhood. All the way through, Homes keeps her boring characters boring, but also adds a little unprofessionalism, violence, and dislikeability into the mix, so that I, at least, was addictedly plot-committed towards the end of the book, whilst all the while wishing I could scream "WTF? STOP THAT!" at the characters.

Interestingly, "In a country of mothers", much as it is a depiction of women doing crazy things, is a feminist book. What Homes makes obvious is her wish to explore the charged notions people have of what they can have in common as gendered actors - what men and women are supposedly like, and what supposedly separates them, and what friendship, motherhood, and love can be between women. It's an ambitious task - Homes adds, amongst other things, a lesbian overtone to what her characters think of as friendship or as motherhood - but I'm not sure what it delivers. Cheap critique, at times (e.g. when a male shrink wants to write about female friendship), and accurate observations, at others (at least Jody's mother reminded me very much, in many ways, of my own) - yes, but something is lacking here - somehow the treatment on the great theme remains incomplete. Maybe the elements are too simple. Maybe the story is too short.

There are some things I appreciated in this book simply as A.M. Homes's craft. As in "The End of Alice", in "In a country of mothers", Homes excels at making observations about tiny things, such as physical behaviour or child psychology. The other thing amazing thing is, the two books differ in narrative voice, not in style. Homes writes with a deadpan conciseness, pithiness of expression, and does not stray from her thematic task. Yet, at the beginning of "In a country of mothers", this basic element of her writing works against the readability of the book, so that the boring normalcy of the book's chosen setting is reinforced, not romanticised, by the writing. Still, Homes's occasionally fantastic one-liners - grotesque or humorous desires, thoughts or attitudes attributed to her characters in unexpected situations - keep the plot moving, and me reading.

What I would finally criticise is the structuring of "In a country of mothers". Like "The End of Alice", the narrative in "In a country of mothers" is linear to begin with, and breaks down towards the end. We get crazy episodes of violence, fear, thoughts of suicide, and high drama, topped off with a very short denouement. Whilst it converts what seemed to be a rather basic story in literary fiction into a thriller - for about 50 pages - Homes's structuring makes the reading experience rather a painful one, leaving the reader high and dry, and wondering why the last 50 pages had to be so packed with different sorts of elements that seemed logical enough developments of what had happened before, but not really predictable as such, and not explicable in a moment.(less)

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Jan 06, 2013 Gordon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: school

I honestly don't know what to say yet about this book. It's clearly more than I bargained for. It has left me not being able to sleep and to be involved in self-evaluation. The relationship of Claire, the therapist and Jody, the client is well beyond what is healthy for either of them, but they are not silly people. They know so much of what is bad for them, but they are pressed, willingly into a relationship that destroys much of their internal sanity. Both have incredible chinks in their emoti...more

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Oct 29, 2010 rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, 2010

My experience with A.M. Homes books is that they are a weird combination of 1.) scandalous, 2.) boring, and 3.) sometimes wonderful on a line by line basis, good for that one shot observation that you could have given the same words to if only you'd been smart enough to think of it first.

Exhibit for 1.) All of The End of Alice.
Exhibit for 2.) Also, somehow, all of The End of Alice, since the characters never seemed real at all to me and thus, the whole narrative was like "ennui eating scabs enn...more My experience with A.M. Homes books is that they are a weird combination of 1.) scandalous, 2.) boring, and 3.) sometimes wonderful on a line by line basis, good for that one shot observation that you could have given the same words to if only you'd been smart enough to think of it first.

Exhibit for 1.) All of The End of Alice.
Exhibit for 2.) Also, somehow, all of The End of Alice, since the characters never seemed real at all to me and thus, the whole narrative was like "ennui eating scabs ennui leaking shit ennui pedophilia".
Exhibit for 3.) The part in In a Country of Mothers where twenty-four year old Jody, uninterested in having sex any longer with the man she is currently having sex with, turns her head around to tell him no and "no longer cares if this makes her look like she has two or three chins".

In fact, I was so delighted by #3 that I began to notice and to enjoy A.M. Homes' brand of feminism, which is far from preachy and rarely fulfilled or executed by her characters. Her tactic of mentioning repeatedly, but not commenting on, the fact that Claire has an unspoken expectation to provide her family of blissfully unhampered men and boys with food and schedules is great, because a woman's domestic responsibility often is assumed and yet not made mention of. I felt Claire's exhaustion without any commentary.

I know it sounds like I really enjoyed this one, especially compared to Homes' other work. And that's true, to an extent. I never thought I'd say this, given #1 above, but I reaaaally wanted this to be a little crazier than it was. If there's any author I'd rely on to make things a little crazy, it's A.M. Homes.* This book let me down by having only a smattering of psychosis, even though the leg-in-heels on the front cover teased me with the possibility of a Sharon Stone/Glenn Close/SWF twist. Eh, it only cost $1. I don't regret spending that.

* = Charlene Harris is a close second. Though from reading reviews of the Sookie Stackhouse series to date, she should probably be #1/Old Reliable. But I don't want to say that definitively without reading more than one of her books. (less)

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Jul 02, 2008 RatsRGods rated it 5 of 5 stars

My girlfriend, A.M. Holmes, has this way of leaving me feeling completely dejected and empty at the end of her books. That is why I love her so.
This book is about a girl and her psychologist. The psychologist starts to believe that her patient is her daughter that she gave up for adoption when she was young. Of course, it spirals into obsession and weirdness that only A.M. Homes can create.

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Aug 04, 2011 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

i have kind of a love/like relationship with a.m. homes. sometimes i love her work, sometimes it bores the hell out of me. this one was was more in the middle. i liked it enough, but something wasn't ringing true here, and when i found out she borrowed heavily from her own story of being adopted, i figured that must be it. maybe the subject matter was too close for her to be able to write in a completely authentic way about a situation where a psychologist gets too close to a patient that she be...more

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Jun 08, 2009 Laurie rated it 2 of 5 stars

this was highly disappointing. I always have loved AM Holmes and really liked The End of Alice and other really surprising, dark but deeply felt characters in her books. The writing here was sloppy and amateur (i.e., "they cleaned the room as if a serial killer had been there."), the characters were no only flat but were contradictory in thier actions, and there is nothing worse than getting to the end of a book and you look up and say "HUH?"!!! After a big showdown between the two main characte...more

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May 28, 2012 Mircalla64 (free Liu Xiaobo) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: postmoderni

faccio la psicologa e mi sento sempre in colpa

il punto è spostare la colpa e risolvere quella degli altri...
spesso si sceglie una professione per motivi inconsapevoli, ma chi fa il terapeuta sa bene quali sono i motivi che lo spingono a fare quel lavoro...io lo faccio e so perchè lo faccio
Claire non ne è del tutto consapevole, ma il testo è ugualmente credibile, almeno finora
Jodi invece sembra uscita da un libro di Alice Miller
e questo, almeno per me, è un bene

prima parte fulminante, subit...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Esther rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: review

Grossartig!

Kurzweilig und doch intensiv, rasant und doch tiefgründig, überraschend und doch authentisch - und zumindest was das Grundthema Adoption angeht wohl auch autobiografisch.

Eine junge Frau sucht Hilfe für eine berufliche Entscheidung bei einer Psychotherapeutin. Die junge Frau ist als Baby "halblegal" adoptiert worden (denn in den 60ger Jahren war das noch ein Tabuthema in den USA) und hat u. a. wegen diesem grundlegenden Identifikationsproblem schon ihr halbes Leben mit Therapie verbr...more

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Dec 31, 2009 Martinxo rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: mothers, daughters

Recommended to Martinxo by: no one

Shelves: 2009, fiction

I'd actually like to give this 3.5 stars but one can't so...4 it is.

I loved this book for most of the way through but became a little impatient with the two main characters towards the end.

It's a well written book about the relationship between a therapist and her young female client.

The novel gets a little twisted towards the last couple of chapters but I won't say any more about that.

I think I'll check out more books by A.M.Homes, she's a good writer.

My last book of 2009!

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May 24, 2011 Patricia rated it 4 of 5 stars

3.5 but I'll go 4.

It's been awhile since a book has left me feeling so off kilter. Right from the start I was into the story. As I got further into the book I began to get more and more sucked into the characters and their burgeoning relationship and I was having a hard time putting it down. Well, as things began to turn, obsessive is what comes to mind, it was so uncomfortable for me to keep reading. And still, it's definitely one of those books that I'll continue to think about.

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Oct 15, 2008 Terry rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I was interested in reading Homes' fiction after reading, and liking, her memoir. This is one of her earlier books. It borrows rather heavily from her own life, so I can't even say how it would read to someone who wasn't familiar with her biography--would one find it jarring or bizarre? Perhaps, but knowing many of the background details and a few of the plot points were copied from Homes' own life made the book a little less interesting to me. And the characters act in very bizarre ways, so muc...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Bill rated it 1 of 5 stars

Boring, boring, boring, boring. A quick read, read almost all of it in one day, the writing was good, the story was boring. There was only one exciting part in the book almost at the end that lasted for half a page and then it wasn't mentioned again. The book ended like the author ran out of paper. I would not reccommend this, there are much better books out there...

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Feb 15, 2011 Elyse rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read this book after grabbing it from a friend's shelf when I ran out of books on vacation. Devoured it in a matter of hours, it was so engrossing and totally disturbing. A good read for book club, there is just so much to discuss about the characters and their descent into a totally destructive and co-dependent relationship.

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Sep 25, 2011 Joan Winnek rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book held my interest with strong characterization, humor, an engrossing situation, vivid writing. Then at the end everything fell apart. I felt sad for the two main characters but found them less believable. Instead of moving toward integration, or even tragedy, each woman became almost a caricature of disintegration.

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Sep 25, 2010 Lana rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

There's a good idea between the covers of this book, I just wish it had been developed by a more talented writer. Homes creates characters that are not just unbalanced, they're all over the place and rather unbelievable. I'm sure her intention is to shock the reader, but she just comes off as a hack.

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May 11, 2013 Miranda rated it 3 of 5 stars

I generally think very highly of A.M. Holmes' work but this book left me feeling slightly disappointed. I still enjoyed it and thought the characters were well-developed but for me, the plot didn't progress as much as I had expected and it didn't grip me as much as some of her other work.

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May 04, 2013 Nicci Shepherd rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed the plot and characters unravelling under the weight of misguided supposition. As a mother of sons it was also interesting to read about Clare's obsession with finding her adopted daughter.

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Mar 20, 2013 Christopher Winterburn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

ALL SHRINKS ARE MAD!

I was of that opinion before I read the book. The third AM Homes book I read and I wasn't disappointed. Quite a twisted, off the wall tale, very strong characters. It left me feeling uncomfortably embarrassed because I could see the car-crash unfolding in their professional relationship.

I say very little about the plot because I don't like to ruin it for others.

AM Homes always writes something quite different from the norm, stuff to stir emotions and make you think out of the...more

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Jul 18, 2012 A.F. rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't think this would be as incisive or damning if you have nothing in common with the the primary character. In my case, this was one spooky novel.

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Aug 08, 2011 Ron rated it 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating account of the classic case of transference that can occur between therapist and patient is given a twist in which the therapist ends up being far more disturbed.

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Oct 17, 2011 Antoinette rated it 2 of 5 stars

The cover notes, "Homes...has the ability to scare you half to death." I finished the book and am still waiting.

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Jan 22, 2013 Martie Nees Record rated it 4 of 5 stars

A shrink convinces herself that one of her patients (who was adopted at birth) is her lost daughter that she gave up for adoption 25 years earlier. Lots of transference, counter transference, codependency and plain old craziness in both women. A psychology creepy book about mothers, daughter and sanity. I loved it.

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Aug 08, 2011 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rivetting, a page-turner...I started and finished it in one day.

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Feb 29, 2012 Julia rated it 1 of 5 stars

I barely remember this book except that it annoyed me.

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Nov 16, 2012 Whitney rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is MESSED UP but in a good way.

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About A.M. Homes

A.M. Homes is the author of the novels, This Book Will Save Your Life, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist's book Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel the End of Alice.

In April of...more A.M. Homes is the author of the novels, This Book Will Save Your Life, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist's book Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel the End of Alice.

In April of 2007 Viking published her long awaited memoir, The Mistress's Daughter, the story of the author being "found" by her biological family, and a literary exploration and investigation of identity, adoption and genealogical ties that bind.

Her work has been translated into eighteen languages and appears frequently in Art Forum, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Zoetrope. She is a Contributing Editor to Vanity Fair, Bomb and Blind Spot.

She has been the recipient of numerous awards including Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, NYFA, and The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, along with the Benjamin Franklin Award, and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.

In addition she has been active on the Boards of Directors of Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center In Provincetown, The Writers Room, and PEN-where she chairs both the membership committee and the Writers Fund. Additionally she serves on the Presidents Council for Poets and Writers.

A.M. Homes was a writer/producer of the hit television show The L Word in 2004-2005 and wrote the adaptation of her first novel JACK, for Showtime. The film aired in 2004 and won an Emmy Award for Stockard Channing. Director Rose Troche's film adaptation of The Safety of Objects was released in 2003, and Troche is currently developing In A Country of Mothers as well. Music For Torching is in development with director Steven Shainberg with a script by Buck Henry, and This Book Will Save Your Life is in Development with Stone Village Pictures.

Born in Washington D.C., she now lives in New York City.(less)

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