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This is a lyrical book, dense, at times holding you at arms length. The Mothers exist only as collective never as individuals. The conflict between the world they create and the world beyond is never settled – a darker vision that the similar home making of Mrs Madrigal.
It is a hypnotic world – which delights as much as it fills you with sorrow – a refusal to accept that the conventional wisdom of how to be is all that is possible.
Within Teddy’s side of the story there is this interesting reflection on going into Church
“He goes not to pray but to acknowledge his good fortune, knowing it is the sancity of space he wishes to commune with, rather than a higher being. Where else can he give thanks but there? Where else will he find the space; this peace? The noise from the Mothers’ apartments dill him, even when they are at their most argumentative, he is happy there, flooded with life and sound, but the peace he finds there is in snatches…
The attraction of church is that its silence is a constant. He doesn’t care about God, but understands how it’s possible for people to make their weekly appointments here… What he gets from a hard church seat is pared down even further, down to his elements.
He does not come to church to pray, more searching for ways to escape...” (p68)
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