Missing Mom

 

Summary (from the publisher): Nikki Eaton, single, thirty-one, sexually liberated, and economically self-supporting, has never particularly thought of herself as a daughter. Yet, following the unexpected loss of her mother, she undergoes a remarkable transformation during a tumultuous year that brings stunning horror, sorrow, illumination, wisdom, and even—from an unexpected source—a nurturing love.
Review: On a surface level, Missing Mom is about Nikki's struggle to deal with the grief of tragically losing her mother. In the process, Nikki realizes the wisdom of her mother's advice that she had spurned for a lifetime. In many ways, her mother's death forces Nikki to finally become a functioning adult and to face her decisions with a more mature and purposeful outlook.

In many ways, Nikki is not a likeable character, or at least she wasn't for me. She's fairly self-absorbed and inconsiderate of others feelings or concerns. It's hard to have a clear portrait of her sister Clare's marriage because everything in the novel is seen through the first person perspective of Nikki. However, I get the impression that Clare is deeply unhappy and when she decides to leave her husband Rob, he is devastated. Nikki is entirely unsympathetic to both of them. Of course, Nikki is dealing with the loss of her mother, who died in a tragic way, but all of her memories and flashbacks before her mother's death reveal similar behavior. Nikki and Clare's mother Gwen is truly the only really likeable character in this book. Yet even towards her, Nikki is condescending and short, until its too late.

Following her mother's death, Nikki moves into her mother's house, in a way both physically and mentally donning the life and perspective of her mother. Throughout the novel, she repeatedly hides from sympathetic neighbors and friends who drop by the house to check on her. Yet by the end of the novel, she has begun visiting her elderly relatives and taking on her mother's traits, including baking goods for everyone. Additionally, she acknowledges that she is not as independent and solitary as she seemed to want to believe but needs all these other people that she rejected for the first three decades of her life. In particular, Nikki makes a lot of progress when she casts off the (seemingly foul) married man she, Wally Szalla, that she has been having an on again/off again relationship with for some time.

This novel is primarily a mental journey. Aside from the gruesome death of Nikki's mother, nothing of any notice really happens. I was annoyed the whole book with the self-indulgent and overly self-absorbed personality Nikki has and how, despite her personal growth, she does not seem to change in that regard. I also was suspicious of the ending and who Nikki ends up with. It felt arbitrary and more out of the author's need for a clear cut conclusion than something the character would have actually done.

Stars: 3