The Other Mother

June 4, 2007
Gross's third novel (following Getting Out
) documents the front lines of the “Mommy Wars,” but its real strength lies in exposing the complex inner battlefields motherhood can open up. Eight months pregnant Amanda, a successful children's book editor and dedicated New Yorker, picks up with her lawyer husband and moves to suburban Teaneck, N.J. Her new neighbor, Thea Caldwell, is a full-time mother of three who still lives in her childhood home and who arrives bearing brownies. When the newcomers take extended shelter in the Caldwells' basement following a damaging storm and, later, when Amanda hires Thea as her newborn's nanny, the growing intimacy between the two breeds resentment, bitterness and misunderstandings. The series of external crises designed to create tension and suspense are, in the end, less compelling than the women's own inner demons, revealed through alternating, and overlapping, first-person narration. Jersey resident Gross shows the strife between SAHMs (Stay at Home Moms) and WOTHs (moms who Work Outside the Home) to be a lot more nuanced than it's often portrayed.

June 15, 2007
While her two previous novels (e.g., "Field Guide") featured adventuring women, Gross's new work stays closer to home. The story is told in alternate voices. Stay-at-home mom Thea lives with husband Caius in the house where she grew up. New next-door neighbor Amanda and husband Aaron never expected to find themselves in the suburbs, much less New Jersey, but with their first child on the way they're putting down roots. While Thea spends her days shuttling her school-age children to extracurricular events and trying to keep two-year-old Iris out of trouble, Amanda is planning to return to her publishing job as soon as possible after her daughter's birth. Soon after Malena is born, a tree crashes through her parents' house, and Caius offers the family shelter. This proximity both jumpstarts friendships and propels the neighbors from each other like the north ends of a magnet. Most of the novel stays within the heads of the two women, as they reexamine their own approaches to motherhood while feeling both superior to (and envious of) the choice the other has made. The ending, seemingly awkwardly tagged on, takes place on 9/11. Suddenly, two women who hated each other passionately are making up and hugging in a melodramatic moment that doesn't seem real. For public libraries.Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2007
Maybe Thea resented Amanda moving into the house that once belonged to her childhood best friend. Perhaps Amanda was jealous of Theas effortless domestic skills. Or maybe Thea couldnt approve of Amandas decision to return to work after the birth of her daughter Malena, while Amanda failed to understand how Thea could find fulfillment as the stay-at-home mom of three. Whatever the reasons, it soon becomes clear that there is ample potential for animosity between these two neighbors, and the hostilities only escalate once Amandas family is forced to move in with Theas after their house is extensively damaged during a violent storm and Thea offers to become Malenas nanny. When dead animals start showing up on Theas doorstep, however, Amanda is her first suspect, and, suddenly, whatever petty differences the two families may have had take on sinister new meaning. By using the alternating points of view of each intensely multifaceted woman, Gross paints an electrifyingly complex and explosively gripping portrait of contemporary, have-it-all motherhood.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)