reviews
"Breathtakingly original...I loved, loved, loved this novel."
- Caroline Leavitt
buy it!
about me
read it!
The Other Mother: A Novel
by Gwendolen Gross
"an electrifyingly complex and explosively gripping portrait of contemporary, have-it-all motherhood"
- Booklist
"best book of the year"
- RoleMommy blog
- NJ.com
***** Selection of 4 National Book Clubs
***** Redbook "Editor's Choice"
what mom blogs are saying...
"The book was amazing...As the story continues we truly get to know both Moms. OMG. I loved them both. I hated them both. I wanted to hug them both. I wanted to shake them both. I wanted to crawl into the pages and bang their heads together. There was so much of ME in both of them.”
- MyLifeAsItIs blog
"I LOVED this book. For me, the best part of this book was the look inside the stay at home mom's house. Since I work full time and always have, I have no idea what it would be like to be a stay at home mom. This book gave me a glimpse into this life.
- This Mama's Trip blog
"The Other Mother clearly illustrates the self-doubt that is a part of parenthood, the firm convictions that we carry with us - be they right or wrong, and the special treat of being able to really see issues from a perspective other than our own...
Congratulations to you, Gwendolen, for giving us the gift of new perspectives and for reminding us that as a parent, each decision made is much more complex and very often much more agonizing that one might originally consider."
- Go-Go Mommy blog
The Other Mother...read it!
Finally, hours after Amanda was due back, there was a scrabbling sound at the door. I got up, then sat back down on the couch. Malena had fussed herself back to a temporary sliver of sleep.
Amanda flurried into the kitchen. She sighed even as she opened the door. She dumped a briefcase and a coat on the kitchen floor. Her face was etched with worry, and with something else.
"I can't do this, I can't leave her," she said. Just as I was thinking, "I can't do this, I can't keep taking her." But I didn't say it. Amanda was crying. I'd never seen her cry, even on the night her house was crushed, even the first morning away from her baby, even with relief on the nights she came late to pick her up. But she'd never been this late.
"Why are you so late?" I asked, more snappish than I'd intended.
"God, Thea," she said. She sat beside me and reached for Malena, unbuttoning her blouse. "There was a train accident. I tried to call, but there was no reception and then my battery died. It was stupid, and I didn't know what to do. Someone was hit by the train. Someone was so sad he jumped in front of the train. And the brake screamed and there was this thunk, even way back in my car. We killed him. I don't really want to think about it, but I still looked really quickly, when they finally let us onto the platform to walk to the shuttles. I won't tell you what it looked like." She gasped, sobbed a little more.
"We had to wait for hours, and I was late to start with, and then the bus got caught in traffic in Lyndhurst. It was so awful, his arm -- I can't talk about this."
Malena had latched on, and Amanda's face softened with the relief and pleasure of nursing. In her cream-colored suit with her blouse unbuttoned, she leaned to the side while she nursed, slumping toward me, then resting against me. It didn't feel wrong. I wasn't angry with her anymore. I was trying to be nicer, to like her more. That had been my first instinct, to like Amanda. She was certainly heavier than a child, but as temporarily wretched as a 2-year-old who's fallen off the bigger kids slide at the playground. I let her lean. I could smell her milk, sweet and grassy.
"I can't leave her. It isn't worth it," she said again, turning her face to me. There was a ghost of plum-colored lipstick on her lips. I'd never noticed how soft her mouth looked, how the top lip peaked in a perfect bow.
"It's okay, sweetheart," I said forgetting for a second that she wasn't one of mine.
The Other Mother...reviews
"[The Other Mother] paints an electrifyingly complex and explosively gripping portrait of contemporary, have-it-all motherhood."
"The Other Mother belongs in a new fiction genre: mommy-war lit. Mothers of infants through the kindergarten set will find it compelling be they stay-at-home mothers or working. Author Gwendolen Gross' best insights are into how the two women's own childhoods and moms have shaped their choices. And how motherhood seems to trigger a biological urge to judge other females."
- USA Today (Mommy Lit Book Roundup)
"[The Other Mother] is a thoughtful, multi-faceted look at what divides and unites mothers."
-National Public Radio
"[In The Other Mother] not everything is resolved, but some things are better understood, which is asking for, and getting, a lot."
- New York Daily News
"Gross has crafted a novel that succeeds on an emotional level as well as an intellectual one."
- Toronto Star
"Alternating chapters from a working mother and a stay-at-home mom provide interesting perspectives from both sides of the mommy wars."
- OK! magazine
"Editor's Choice"
- RedBook magazine
"The battle of The Other Mother is a dark look into everything that tears us apart and brings us closest together."
- Dame magazine
"The depth of Gross' portraits, and the nobility she imbues both moms with, renders a thoughtful account of how, for modern mothers, there is no easy choice."
- Boston Now
"Gross' ability to create fiction of such high caliber makes this a must-read for mothers with literary interest...the lovely complexity of the author's writing and her ability to create sensual intimacy make all 300 pages of this text a delight."
- The Roanoke Times
"Gross's third novel documents the front lines of the Mommy Wars, but its real strength lies is exposing the complex inner battlefields motherhood can open up."
- Publisher's Weekly
The Other Mother...about me
Gwendolen Gross grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. She graduated from Oberlin College, where she studied science writing and voice performance. She spent a semester in Australia with a field studies program, studying spectacled fruit bats in the rainforest remnants of Northern Queensland.
After college Ms. Gross moved to San Francisco, then San Diego, and worked in publishing, as well as performing with the San Diego Opera Chorus. Through the San Diego Writing Center, she was selected for the PEN West Emerging Writers Program.
Ms. Gross received an M.F.A. in fiction and poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have been published in dozens of literary magazines, including Salt Hill Journal, Global City Review, The Laurel Review, and Hubbub, where her poem was selected for the 1999 Adrienne Lee Award.
Her first novel, Field Guide, was issued by Henry Holt in April 2001 (Harvest paperback 2002), and her second, Getting Out, in spring 2002. These two women's adventure fiction novels received critical acclaim. Ms. Gross then shifted her focus to the dramas of motherhood with The Other Mother, which was released in August 2007 by Random House. Gwendolen's most recent novel, The Orphan Sister (Simon and Schuster), was released in July 2011.
Ms. Gross is also an award-winning writing instructor and has led workshops at Sarah Lawrence College and the UCLA Extension online. Her guest lectures include appearances at the Fashion Institute of Technology, at Barnes and Noble's Educator's Night, and The World's Largest Writing Workshop. Ms. Gross has worked as a snake and kinkajou demonstrator, naturalist, opera singer, editor, and mom. She lives in northern New Jersey with her family.
Gwendolen Gross is listed in University of Pennsylvania's Celebration of Women Writers, is featured as a New Jersey writer in "Jersey Blogs," and included in the Arts: Literature: World Literature: American: 21st Century section of the Open Directory Project (DMOZ),Library of Congress, Simon and Schuster, Random House, the UCLA Extension Writers Program.
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Featured in USA Today, the New York Daily News, the Toronto Star, Redbook, OK! Magazine, and National Public Radio.
