CG: What resources are available for women experiencing postpartum mood disorders?
TT: Probably the best resource in the US is www.postpartum.net. From there you can locate other resources. If you don’t find what you need on the website, call or email them.
CG: Is there anything else you would like to add?
TT: Women with this illness are not evil and are not to blame—even those who harm others. Blaming the woman is a step away from what we need, which is more efforts to prevent such tragedies. We need increased education and awareness that can lead to prompt action and proper care.
Also, I appreciate your contacting me in an effort to “get it right.” Too often articles and stories about this illness simply reinforce common misconceptions—even when the writer is well-intentioned. This is such a problem that I actually devote part of a chapter in my book to address those in the media.
CG: I’m glad that I did. Also, that chapter, “Postpartum Psychosis Across History and in the Media Today,” was very helpful. Throughout your book, the distinctions you make between what people used to refer to as “baby blues” and specific postpartum mood disorders helped me think about what my characters were experiencing and about stereotypes that I wanted to move beyond. I remember vividly that my mother told me that after she gave birth to her middle child (my older brother) she had suicidal thoughts. I was the first person she’d ever told about what she experienced because she still had a deep sense of shame about the feelings she’d had. I’m grateful to you, and other writers, for shedding light on these experiences in a compassionate and nonjudgmental manner. Thank you for your book and for doing this interview.
TT: Thank you.
Reading Group Guide
Describe the setting of the novel. How do the surroundings create a mood or reflect the thoughts and actions of the characters in the story?
What was your first impression of Daphne? Did you think she was a good mother? What about Laurel?
When did things first appear to be off with Sky? Can you point to a specific moment in the story when you felt that she wasn’t quite who she seemed to be?
Describe and compare the narrative voices between the three journal writers (Daphne, Laurel, and Edith).
The connection between women and madness goes back a long way. Indeed, the term “hysteria” originates from the Greek word for uterus, hystera. And throughout history, women who have rebelled against patriarchal control and the demands for respectability were considered “deviant” or “mad.” How do the female characters in The Other Mother play into this historical narrative? Are they acting out against male control? How so?
Do you think Peter is a good husband? Why or why not?
There’s a lot of doubling—groupings of two characters who appear to resemble or switch places with each other—throughout this story. Describe these groupings. In what ways do the characters double each other?
Take a moment to think about the significance of myths in this story, particularly those about Solomon and the changeling. What do these myths suggest about motherhood? How do they inform specific moments in the novel?
What is postpartum depression? How much did you know about this condition going into the story? What did you learn?
Comment on the story’s narrative structure. How does the nonlinear format engage with the story’s themes of psychosis, depression, and mental illness in general? If the narration unfolded from start to finish, how would the reading experience change?
When Billie first tells Daphne about the woman who jumped from the tower, what did you make of the story? Did you suspect it was Sky or somebody else?
The story relies heavily on first-person perspective and written documentation (such as the journal entries and doctors’ files). How does this intimate method of storytelling challenge stigmas against mental illness? To what extent do you consider the characters depressed or neurotic?
Are you satisfied? What do you envision the future will look like for Daphne and the other characters?
Read On
An Excerpt from The Widow’s House
Chapter One
WHEN I PICTURE the house I see it in the late afternoon, the golden river light filling the windows and gilding the two-hundred-year-old brick. That’s how we came upon it, Jess and I, at the end of a long day looking at houses we couldn’t afford.
“It’s the color of old money,” Jess said, his voice full of longing. He was standing in the weed-choked driveway, his fingers twined through the ornate loops of the rusted iron gate. “But I think it’s a little over our ‘price bracket.’”
I could hear the invisible quotes around the phrase, one the Realtor had used half a dozen times that day. Jess was always a wicked mimic and Katrine Vanderberg, with her faux country quilted jacket and English rubber boots and bright yellow Suburban, was an easy target. All she needs is a hunting rifle to look like she strode out of Downton Abbey, he’d whispered in my ear when she’d come out of the realty office to greet us. You’d have to know Jess as well as I did to know it was himself he was mocking for dreaming of a mansion when it was clear we could hardly afford a hovel.
It had seemed like a good idea. Go someplace new. Start over. Sell the (already second-mortgaged) Brooklyn loft, pay back the (maxed-out) credit cards, and buy something cheap in the country while Jess finished his book. By country, Jess meant the Hudson Valley, where we had both gone to college, and where he had begun his first novel. He’d developed the superstition over the last winter that if he returned to the site where the muses had first spoken to him he would finally be able to write his long-awaited second novel. And how much could houses up there cost? We both remembered the area as rustic: Jess because he’d seen it through the eyes of a Long Island kid and me because I’d grown up in the nearby village of Concord and couldn’t wait to get out and live in the city.
Since we’d graduated, though, 9/11 had happened and property values in exurbia had soared. The rustic farmhouses and shabby chic Victorian cottages we’d looked at today cost more than we’d get for the sale of our Brooklyn loft and Jess had immediately rejected the more affordable split-levels and sixties suburban ranches Katrine showed us.
“They remind me of my dismal childhood,” he said, staring woefully at the avocado linoleum of a Red Hook faux Colonial.
“There’s one more place I think you should see,” Katrine had said after Jess refused to get out of the car at a modular home. She’d turned the Suburban off Route 9G toward River Road. For a second I thought she was driving us toward the college and I tensed in the backseat. Jess might want to live in the area where we had gone to school, but he didn’t want to see those young hopeful college students loping along the shaded paths of Bailey College. At least not until he’d finished the second novel and he was invited back to do a reading.
But Katrine turned south, away from the college, and I heard Jess in the front seat sigh as we entered the curving tree-lined road. This was what I knew he had in mind when he talked about moving to the country: dry-laid stone walls covered with moss, ancient sycamores with bark peeling off like old wallpaper, apple orchards, clapboard Victorian farmhouses, and, through the gaps in the trees, glimpses of stately mansions and the blue ridges of the Catskills beyond the river. The road itself was filled with the light of a Hudson River school painting. I could see it reflected in Jess’s face, replacing the sallow cast it had taken on this winter as he’d labored over his long-unfinished work. Or the “unborn monster,” as he’d christened it. If only there were something we could afford on this road, but even the dreary farmhouse I’d grown up in was surely out of our price range.
When we pulled into a weed-choked driveway and parked outside a rusted gate, though, I immediately recognized where we were and thought Katrine had misunderstood our situation. Lots of people did. Jess was, after all, a famous writer. The first book had done well enough—and he’d been young and photogenic enough—to get his picture in Granta and Vanity Fair. He’d gotte
n a high-six-figure advance for the second novel—but that was ten years ago. The advance was long gone; the second novel was still incomplete.
But Jess had already gotten out, drawn by that golden river light, and gone to stand at the iron gate to gaze up at the house. Silhouetted against the afternoon light, so thin and wiry in his black jeans and leather jacket, he looked like part of the iron scrollwork. How thin he’s grown this winter, I thought. The late afternoon sun turned Jess’s hair the red gold it had been when we first met in college, banishing the silver that had begun, not unattractively, to limn his temples. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, but I could still read the longing in his face as he gazed up at the house. And who wouldn’t long for such a house?
It stood on a rise above a curve in the river like a medieval watchtower. The old brick was mellowed with age and warmed from centuries of river light, the windows made from wavy cockled glass with tiny bubbles in it that held the light like good champagne. The sunken gardens surrounding an ornamental pond were already cool and dark, promising a dusky retreat even on the hottest summer day. For a moment I thought I heard the sound of glasses clinking and laughter from a long-ago summer party, but then I realized it was just some old wind chimes hanging from the gatehouse. There hadn’t been any parties here for a while. When the sun went behind a cloud and the golden glow disappeared my eyes lingered more on the missing slate tiles in the roof, the weeds growing up between the paving stones of the front flagstones, the paint peeling off the porch columns, and the cracked and crumbling front steps. I even thought I could detect on the river breeze the smell of rot and mildew. And when Jess turned, his fingers still gripping the gate, I saw that without that light his face had turned sallow again and the look of longing was replaced with the certainty that he would always be on the wrong side of that gate. That’s how he had become such a good mimic, by watching and listening from the other side. It made my heart ache for him.
“No, not in our ‘price bracket’ I think.”
If Katrine noticed his mocking tone she didn’t let on. “It isn’t for sale,” she said. “But the owner’s looking for a caretaker.”
If I could have tackled her before the words were out of her mouth, I would have, but the damage was already done. Jess’s face had the stony look it got when he was getting ready to demolish someone, but as he often did these days he turned the rancor on himself. “I’ve always fancied myself a bit of a Mellors.”
I was about to jump in and tell Katrine that Mellors was the caretaker in a D. H. Lawrence novel but she was laughing as if she’d gotten the reference. “That’s just the sort of thing Mr. Montague would say. That’s why I thought you two might get along.”
“Montague? Not Alden Montague, the writer? This is his house?” Jess looked at me questioningly to see if I’d known it was the old Montague place, but Katrine, ignoring—or perhaps not noticing—Jess’s appalled tone, saved me.
“I thought you might know him, Jess being a writer and since you both went to Bailey. He’s looking for a caretaker for the estate. A couple, preferably. He’s not paying much, but it’s free rent and I’d think it would be a wonderful place to write. It could be just the thing for your . . . circumstances.”
I glanced at Katrine, reassessing her. Beneath the highlighted blond hair and fake English country getup and plastered-on Realtor’s smile she was smart, smart enough to see through our dithering over the aluminum siding and cracked linoleum to realize we couldn’t afford even the cheapest houses she’d shown us today.
“But you wouldn’t get a commission on that,” I pointed out, half to give Jess a chance to get ahold of himself. The last person who’d mentioned Alden Montague around him had gotten a black eye for his trouble.
“No,” she admitted, “but if someone was on the grounds fixing up the place it would sell for a lot more when the time came—and if that someone planted a bug in Mr. Montague’s ear to use a certain Realtor . . .”
She let her voice trail off with a flip of her blond hair and a sly we’re-all-in-this-together smile that I was sure Jess would roll his eyes at, but instead he smiled back, some of that golden light returning to his face.
“In other words,” he said in the silky drawl he used for interviews, “you don’t give the old man much longer to live and you want an accomplice on the inside.”
To her credit, Katrine didn’t even sham surprise.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. But the word around town is that Mr. Montague is a pretty sick man. I have no intention of taking advantage of that, but I did think the situation might be mutually beneficial . . .”
Jess grinned. “Why then, by all means, set up the interview. I’d give good money to see Old Monty on his deathbed.”
Praise for Carol Goodman and The Widow’s House
“Carol Goodman is, simply put, a stellar writer.”
—Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of The Red Hunter
“Blends a perfect gothic premise . . . with modern mysterious twists. . . . I couldn’t put it down but I didn’t want it to end.”
—Wendy Webb, bestselling and award-winning author of The Vanishing
“Foreboding and moody. . . . As you’re pulled deeper into its crumbling corridors and gothic history, you’ll never guess where its true threats lie.”
—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet and June
“Goodman expertly melds the psychological thriller and academic mystery into a compelling story.”
—Associated Press
“Goodman pushes the needle over into the red zone and keeps it there through page after page of suspense.”
—Chronogram
“[Goodman] offers puzzles and twists galore but still tells a human story.”
—Boston Globe
“Goodman combines gripping suspense with strong characters and artistic themes. Those who read Anita Shreve or Jodi Picoult are likely to become fans.”
—Library Journal
“Goodman specializes in atmospheric literary thrillers.”
—Denver Post
Also by Carol Goodman
The Lake of Dead Languages
The Seduction of Water
The Drowning Tree
The Ghost Orchid
The Sonnet Lover
The Night Villa
Arcadia Falls
River Road
The Widow’s House
CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT
Blythewood
Ravencliffe
Hawthorn
The Metropolitans
AS JULIET DARK
The Demon Lover
The Water Witch
The Angel Stone
AS LEE CARROLL (WITH LEE SLONIMSKY)
Black Swan Rising
The Watchtower
The Shape Stealer
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE OTHER MOTHER. Copyright © 2018 by Carol Goodman. Excerpt from THE WIDOW’S HOUSE © 2017 by Carol Goodman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Elsie Lyons
Cover photograph © Elena Bovo / Trevillion Images
FIRST EDITION
Digital
Edition MARCH 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-256265-4
Version 02272018
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256264-7
ISBN 978-0-06-281983-3 (library edition)
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
The Other Mother Page 28