Mother knows best

Nova Scotia-born, Toronto-based novelist and poet Sara Peters’ latest novel is a lyrical fever dream brimming with unease and dread.

Peters’ first book was the poetry collection 1996, which was followed by the 2019 experimental novel I Become A Delight to My Enemies. That novel blended poetry and prose to explore themes of loss — and ghosts.

Mother of God leans similarly into experimental forms and the horror genre, using lyrical and highly imagistic prose to slowly reveal the complexity of a troubled relationship between a mother and daughter. Billed as literary horror, the novel will appeal to fans of experimental, gothic, dreamy horror such as Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin or Spider by Patrick McGrath.

Marlene works as an internet psychic. On her business cards, she appears as, “Marlene The Exorcist, Psychic Wound Healer.” In reality, while she does indeed have psychic abilities, they are limited only to visions of her mother, Darlene. These visions begin when Marlene is a young girl and continue into her adulthood, even after she has moved away from her childhood home in Nova Scotia to Vancouver.

Marlene has a strained relationship with her mother owing to two major factors: intergenerational trauma from Darlene’s own childhood and the abuse she suffered from her Darlene and her older brothers; and Darlene’s abusive boyfriend, who Marlene calls Trenchfoot Ed because, rather than deal with a plumbing issue in his house, would stand ankle-deep in backed-up sludge water while he showers.

After a difficult break-up with her partner Ingrid, Marlene contacts her mother and decides to head home, both to help herself recover and also because something seems off. When Marlene makes it to her mother’s home, driving from Vancouver to small-town Nova Scotia, Darlene doesn’t seem to be there, but Marlene is still able to communicate with her by way of her visions.

While Peters’ style in Mother of God is perhaps not as distinctly divided into prose and poetry as her previous novel, the prose here is intensely lyrical and filled with sometimes gorgeous, sometimes dread-inducing imagery. Marlene’s psychic visions of her mother, especially as a child, are bizarre and unsettling. The narrative itself is ethereal and dreamlike, bringing the reader directly into Marlene’s visions, which can make it difficult to discern whether particular passages are taking place in the past, in the present or purely as psychic visions.

This dreamy style is impressively effective and while it could have easily created problems with the coherence of the narrative, Peters is in tight control of how everything unfolds. While there is indeed a plot and secrets to uncover, the emotional core of Marlene and Darlene’s individual traumas and how that has affected their relationship is the real focus and such an intangible concept is better expressed through the experimental, “psychic” imagery Peters uses here.

While perhaps not outwardly scary, Mother of God is filled with a quiet but palpable unease. Even the cover photograph has a hidden detail that works like a jumpscare once noticed.

Marlene’s struggles with her own trauma and reckoning with what has happened to her mother are daunting and disorienting.

Peters brings readers right into that struggle in a novel that is unsettling, gloomy and fascinating.

Keith Cadieux is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His latest story collection Donner Parties and Other Anti-Social Gatherings is out now from At Bay Press. He also co-edited the horror anthology What Draws Us Near, published by Little Ghosts Books.