Terrific Mother by Lorrie Moore Review

For years I’ve heard the likes of Nick Hornby and David Sedaris gush over Lorrie Moore but, for no real reason beyond lethargy, I’ve never read anything by her. Having now read Terrific Mother, I can definitely see why she gets praised - this is a gem of a story!

A woman accidentally kills a baby at a picnic, falls into a deep depression, hastily gets married, and sets off for a month-long academic retreat in Italy where she falls in love with a female masseuse - what a year for anyone to go through!

I liked how quickly Moore dealt with the baby’s death right from the start. Some literary writers may dwell on a meaningful event for much too long, drowning the moment in self-indulgent, obfuscating prose for page after page; here it’s over in two long paragraphs. Which I think is a realistic and laudable approach to take - a lot of life’s defining moments happen very fast but the ripples of these moments continue to echo through time and memory.

And that’s the case here because, though it’s rarely mentioned again after, the baby’s death hangs over the idyllic Italian break and you can sense it still haunts our protagonist Adrienne.

All of which makes the story sound like a grim read but surprisingly it’s anything but! Moore’s dialogue is very loose, silly and amusing and the characters’ interactions are very playful. That balance between artistic prose and serious subject matter and light, almost jolly behaviour and tone impressed me the most. One of the lines about Adrienne’s husband Martin actually made me laugh:

“Poor godless, raised-an-atheist-in-Ohio Martin. ‘On Christmas,’ he’d said to her once, ‘we used to go down to the Science Store and worship the Bunsen burners.’”

It’s a testament to Moore’s talent that very little happens in the story but I was never too bored with it. And yet, if there’s one thing that keeps me from giving this one a perfect score, it’s that not enough did happen. The dinner scenes and massage sessions became a bit repetitive after a spell.

Still, Terrific Mother is, well, terrific, and if you’re like me and haven’t tried Lorrie Moore but always meant to, this is as good a starting place as any to dip your toes into!