Mothers A novel

From Mexican writer Lozano (Witches) comes a smashing novel set in 1946, as a wave of kidnappings shock and scandalize northern Mexico. Gloria Felipe, mother of five, discovers one morning that her youngest daughter, also named Gloria, has vanished while playing hopscotch. The police, led by Capt. Ruben Dario "Two Poems" Hernandez, come to Felipe's aid, but are stymied by false leads from opportunists looking for a quick payday. The real culprit is a working-class woman named Nuria Valencia Perez, who has been struggling to conceive. Nuria rechristens the younger Gloria as Agustina and forcibly adopts her into her own struggling family while keeping her under lock and key. What ensues is equal parts detective story, family drama, and social novel, as Two Poems's daring rescue attempts are intercut with Gloria's and Nuria's efforts to keep their families together and earn approval as women capable of motherhood. "There's no greater force in the world than desire," Lozano writes. "There's nothing more dangerous than a mother." Through newspaper clippings, interior monologues, and set pieces in police stations, orphanages, and other institutions, Lozano crafts a darkly comic and deeply human narrative. It's an unforgettable portrait of maternal envy gone mad. (Oct.)

The lives of two mothers in Mexico City are upended in different ways in the latest novel by award-winning Mexican author Lozano. In 1946, as Mexico is "plagued by a wave of kidnappings," 2-year-old Gloria Miranda Felipe disappears from the front yard of her upper-class home. The police are understaffed and underpaid, but by enlisting the media and offering a large reward, her desperate family makes the case a cause célèbre. Elsewhere in the same city, another mother has finally adopted a child after trying for years to conceive. Lozano's interests lie in large questions--societal expectations of mothers and the corresponding pressures to conform, how economic inequality determines who matters in a crisis. Lozano has a good eye for detail--she describes a minor character with "an explosive laugh like that moment when a plate breaks in a restaurant and everyone turns around." Nuria, the mother unable to conceive, "had gotten used to the sensation of being the one left standing in a game of musical chairs." Lozano's wry humor threads through the book. "I wouldn't want you thinking I was some male omniscient narrator," she announces early on. "I'm not a third-person know-it-all who controls the story…I'm a woman, and also a third-person narrator. This is my job." And as in her earlier booksLoop (2021) andWitches (2022), she plays with narrative and point of view as the story expands. Though at times the larger themes feel less than fully developed, the initial mystery of Gloria's disappearance gives way to deeper mysteries, taking the reader to unexpected places. Another ambitious and original work from a writer who is always worth watching. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.