An unfortunately disappointing read, with some moments of levity.
Established author Monica McInerney’s latest book, The Godmothers, starts with much promise but falls far short of the goal.
By the age of eleven, Eliza Miller has lived in eight different country towns, so says the opening scene. Eliza is the only child of drifter mother, Jeanie. While Eliza doesn’t understand her mother’s need to keep moving, she loves her eccentric, imaginative mother deeply, despite the fact she will not tell Eliza who her father is. Instead, she makes up wild stories about him (he’s an astronaut, no, a famous film star, etc) and promises to tell her the truth on her eighteenth birthday. But before Eliza reaches this milestone, Jeanie dies — an accident, though many question if it was suicide.
Luckily for Eliza, her mum gave her two godmothers—her besties from their convent school days. Olivia and Maxie watch over Eliza from afar and ensure she has what she needs to keep going. Twelve years later, Eliza is living a deliberately safe and boring existence in a job that doesn’t challenge her with a boss who fails to respect her, when again her life falls apart. In response, Eliza accepts her godmothers’ invitation to fly to Edinburgh where Olivia owns the family Montgomery hotel and Maxie is getting married.
In Edinburgh, Eliza begins to patch herself back together, joins a chaotic family in its own distress and begins asking questions. Who was her father, and how can she find him when her mother never told anyone who he was, including her godmothers? So begins Eliza’s search for her parentage and from this point, the story becomes singularly focused.
Aspects of this novel were likeable. Eliza is reserved but understandably so; the impact of losing her sole parent as a teenager and the great love she still has for an imperfect mother, make her a sympathetic character. I wanted her to find her father so she could experience closure and move on with her life in a less fearful, cloistered way. Secondary characters, Sullivan the precocious eleven-year-old she meets on the flight to the UK, and Celine, the unwelcome mother-in-law hotel guest, are quite frankly awesome. The horrible boss in the opening chapters is also lots of fun. These minor characters steal the show and left me baffled as to why McInerney failed to write any of the central characters anywhere near as well. It was the fun that these secondary characters injected into the book that saved it from a two-star review.
Unfortunately, though, there’s far more to dislike than to like about The Godmothers. The main players are terribly one-dimensional with the exception of Eliza who, while sympathetic, is still barely more than two-dimensional. The two godmothers, Olivia and Maxie, are just awful. I’m not saying they are written as bad people, but the bad writing renders them flat, clichéd and boring. Speed read any scenes written from their points of view. There’s also an abundance of scenes where not much happens at all. It’s fine to have some scenes like this in a long book to give the reader a breather, but this is a case of way too much breathing, far too little doing. Good for insomnia, though.
Eliza’s dead mother, Jeanie, is largely presented through flashback and memory scenes. While it’s clear the woman had some mental health issues, it’s difficult to be sympathetic as she’s just plain unlikeable. Jeanie is erratic, irritating and basically nasty to her best friends. Her imaginative, flamboyant side may have been fun for Eliza as a child, but it also kept her from knowing her family and subjected her to a nomadic existence and isolated adulthood. Also speed read through any scenes related to Jeanie, ‘cause she’s so utterly annoying.
The Godmothers also presents the world’s most mediocre first date scene. The hint of romance toward the end of the book gave me hopes of salvaging the tale, but McInerney’s summary style reduced what could have been great to a two-page snore. I think, ultimately, it is this overall lack of depth, the trick of summarising scenes rather than allowing the reader to experience them, and the drawn-out ‘nothing’s happening’ that damns The Godmothers to the realms of ‘meh’. Don’t let the blockbuster status and the mountain of publicity thrown behind this book fool you. It’s a terribly average read.
Reviewed by Stacey Carvosso
Distributed by: Penguin Books Australia
Released: September 2020
RRP: $32.99
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