by Kaylie Seed
Content Warning: mental illness
Laura Best’s Good Mothers Don’t follows Elizabeth McKay and her experience with mental illness in the 1960s and 1970s while living in a small farming community in Nova Scotia. Elizabeth has two young children, Jacob and Jewel, and a husband named Cliff, who all love her dearly; she’s living a good life. Elizabeth begins to unravel as she starts hearing voices and imagining herself harming her children. She’s aware that something is wrong, but she can’t seem to control her impulses. A testament to the fact that mental illness can affect anyone regardless of their life situation, Good Mothers Don’t attempts to shed light on how mental illness was treated in the sixties and seventies.
Elizabeth’s narration in the beginning of the story is very scattered, obviously to show the reader the mental state that she is in, yet at times it can be difficult to follow because it’s like being in the mind of someone who cannot control their thoughts. As Elizabeth unravels, the reader will see the lack of support for her mental illness from her husband’s family, who simply think she is “crazy” and not actually in need of help. This part of the novel feels rushed, and Elizabeth’s mental illness feels undeveloped because there is a sudden jump in time to when Elizabeth is well.
Best has clearly done her research when it comes to how mental illness was viewed and treated in this era. Elizabeth is taken away and is prescribed pills and electroshock therapy to help cure her ailments, which causes memory loss for her. Elizabeth is getting well but cannot remember much of her life before she was in Harmony House; but as she begins to find out who she was, her voice becomes clearer than it was in the beginning. The issue with Good Mothers Don’t is that it feels like only the surface has been scratched, and it is lacking depth. Best’s prose draws the reader in, yet something feels missing even when the story comes to an end. Good Mothers Don’t is a lovely piece of Canadian historical fiction, I just wish that it went even deeper with the themes that were presented and that the plot was more developed in places.
Thank you Nimbus Publishing for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review!