Books like

Books like The Mothers

12 books with a reading profile close to The Mothers by Brit Bennett. Inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

The Namesake

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

The narrative follows the Ganguli family, beginning with Ashoke and Ashima’s arranged marriage and subsequent relocation from Calcutta to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2

The Bonesetter's Daughter

by Amy Tan

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Ruth Young, a ghostwriter in San Francisco, struggles to communicate with her mother, LuLing, whose behavior becomes increasingly erratic due to dementia.
3

Breath, Eyes, Memory

by Edwidge Danticat

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Sophie Caco is raised by her aunt Atie in a Haitian village until, at twelve, she is sent to New York to join the mother she barely knows.
4

Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Mikage Sakurai is a young woman struggling with the isolating vacuum of grief after her last living relative dies.
5

Ethan Frome

by Edith Wharton

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Set in the frozen landscape of Starkfield, Massachusetts, the story follows Ethan Frome, a farmer trapped in a hollow marriage to his sickly, suspicious wife, Zeena.
6

La tregua

by Mario Benedetti

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Martín Santomé, a widowed Montevideo office worker, is nearing retirement.
7

Out Stealing Horses

by Per Petterson

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man, has moved to a remote cabin in eastern Norway to live alone with his dog.
8

The History of Love

by Nicole Krauss

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

The story follows Leo Gursky, an elderly locksmith in New York who avoids solitude by making himself seen in public, unaware that a manual he wrote in Poland sixty years ago survived the Holocaust.
9

Stone Butch Blues

by Leslie Feinberg

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Jess Goldberg grows up in the 1940s and 1950s in Buffalo, New York, a working-class child who does not fit gender expectations.
10

Galatea

by Madeline Miller

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

In this short story, a statue carved from ivory is granted life by a goddess, becoming the wife of her creator, Pygmalion.
11

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

by Anne Brontë

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Helen Graham arrives at a desolate Yorkshire estate under a shroud of secrecy, sparking intense local gossip and the unwanted attention of a neighboring farmer, Gilbert Markham.
12

Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · narrative, classic literature

Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor navigates thirteen months of adolescence in a claustrophobic Worcestershire village during 1982.

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