Clove, mother of two has worked hard to overcome childhood trauma she endured in an abusive home. She’s found a husband deemed safe who is nothing like her abusive father. Her balanced life is threatened when she receives a letter from prison. Her mother is begging Clove tell the truth of what happened the night her father was murdered.

I finished this book in 2 days. I was so moved by this story. It detailed domestic violence, breaking generational trauma and character growth. Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC.

I was so so excited to read Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker because I loved her first two books and I loved this book too!! It’s about a mother of two, Clove, who receives a letter from her mother in prison and becomes obsessed to maintain her life from her secret past. This is the perfect literary thriller featuring a compelling female main character who pulls you thoroughly into her world of health food stores, mania and conviction to herself. Bieker has proven herself to be a master at writing women and exploring the mother and daughter relationship. I couldn’t help but read this book right away as soon as I got it and devoured it in three days. It’s one of my faves of this year!

*Spoiler Alert*

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for this ARC of Madwoman by the brilliant Chelsea Bieker.

I requested this book based upon the title alone! I love reading stories about the grit of womanhood.

And of motherhood, we quickly learn: “…that as a mother I would ascend and actualize into who I was meant to be. Babies, the ultimate distraction.”

Such perception. I was drawn into this work of literary fiction with its piercing intellect and vision.

The protagonist, Clove (“C-Love”/Claire/Calla Lily), a mother, speaks in first-person and to a “you” that is her own estranged mother, Alma. “Motherloss” is a theme in this book, and the legacy of pain it carves into women, as well as that of domestic violence.

I am not myself a mother yet I found the main character relatable as a mother with motherloss, under stress, “addicted to self improvement” and retail palliation. To wanting to rewrite your history through rewriting yourself.

And oh, my, what stress we second-hand-experience motherhood to be.
Yet Clove initially used her fantasy of wife (to a “Safe” - yes! - in a world populated with “Unsafes”) and motherhood to pull her from the trauma of her childhood.

For a few years she is indeed safe if not quite sane in her roles as wife to a stable man and mother to two toddlers. Then her mother comes calling out of her buried past looking for freedom.

The risk of helping her incarcerated mother and exposing her own missing-person ruse is complete instability: marital destruction. Clove faked her death to hide from her mother and to keep the affected persona of Normal that had captured her erotically-to-Clove naive husband to begin with. Her mother deserves exoneration, Clove knows. “You carried me, and also, the beginnings of my two children. All of us together as my father beat you.”
But Clove deserves the same.

Some passages spoke to me, resonated with me, so that I felt a visceral grip, such as “What would it have been like to explore [love] without fear? Have a motivation beyond finding someone who would simply not abuse me?”
She was my magic, rearview, mirror.

Clove has an awakening of sorts during her first visit to the bougie health-food store. “I wanted this life. I wanted the Right Life.”
I too felt exactly that when younger and shopping the enlightened aisles of Whole Foods, “touring like a theme park.”
“Grocery, the opposite of violence.”
Grocery means a happy home, the wholesome experience of one.

Clove has to run away from love, to become somehow undamaged.
As witness to her collateral damage would prevent her emotional growth. Only anonymity would allow for healing.
She marries her husband because he is safe and because she can create a new persona that is equally safe, free of trauma.
He fails, in a moment of truth, to discern the difference between “Madwoman and Mad Woman,” when a reenactment of her father’s murder by her mother plays on television. He is too simple-minded in his judgment to be part of her salvation, only another part of her problem. He fails to choose the correct Clove and thus her true love.

Clove seeks “trauma bonding” with another woman: The Chevy Woman, Jane, who also lives in the Grocery world. Together they can meld their sadness. They can “do life” together.

This book was so good that it made the horrific domestic violence accounts easier to wade through, wincing as I did. That all of this battering happened in the tropical paradise of Hawaii was ironic.

This book started out like women’s fiction and is categorized as such but it became a thriller, and wow, those final twists!

Was Jane trustworthy and pure in her own trauma-bonding with Clove?
Would Clove or her mother survive either giving in or giving up? Would Clove survive her past, represented in her freed mother? The pages flipped fast as I was eager to find out.

Will her mother love her enough to leave her out of her life, her salvation? Will her mother - finally - protect Clove?
Or is seeing her mother - her own self with her mother - her real, only fear?

In the end The Butcher had the ability to let Clove be herself. To see herself. To see that her mother sacrificed her freedom to protect Clove, to do that because Clove first sacrificed her future life to save her mother.

Oh, but there was another who knew her, saw her, past and present.

And finally, her husband sees her, Calla Lily. He smiles. He stays. They are safe.

They are all, including Alma, finally free.

Five stars!

this was overall a good thriller/mystery book. covered all the bases, but i found it a little too predictable? i guessed the twist early on, and while i liked seeing it play out i was really ready for it to be over.

a great story about addiction, violence, family, secrets and love.

Cutting and sharp book of motherhood and the effects on the mother and child’z thanks for the arc! Would quite recommend