... a grim, disturbing novel of family drama and mental illness, yet a bizarrely funny glimpse into one woman's mind ... Hogarth rocks readers via Abby's turmoil, her swings from devotion to fury, self-loathing to self-aggrandizement. Motherthing keeps readers as unstable as its narrator, struggling to manage the traumas and the waves of emotion ... The result of these roiling thoughts and images is a darkly comic, kaleidoscopic novel of unhealthy fixations, love, murder, the gifts and wounds that family can inflict and one woman's fight to save herself.
This horror comedy is not for the faint of heart, and some readers may also be a bit confused by the shifts to a play-script format mixed in with the main text, usually indicating interactions between Abby and her husband, Ralph, in which they argue over Abby’s obsession with starting a family. Despite the obstacles in her path, she tries to find a way to get her baby—any way she can. Fans of Jeff Strand, Grady Hendrix, and other dark-humor takes on horror will enjoy Motherthing.
... upends our expectations of the unexpected, complicating the horror experience by delivering a narrative that is delightfully unfamiliar ... Abby has a penchant for these quick pivots, shifting between tenderness for Ralph, angst about the growing chasm she senses between them, and her favorite coping strategy — a charming flippancy. Her wry, wise voice provides color commentary on her own increasingly erratic perspective ... There are oft-discussed drawbacks to first-person novels — the excessive interiority, the unreliability of the narrator, the inevitable time or logic problems when the narrator is a player in the story she’s telling. In the case of Abby, though, these pitfalls turn out to be assets ... Abby’s unpredictable insights and turns of phrase are evident on every page, and they are as irresistible as the urge to see for oneself the ghost in the basement, to touch a kitchen knife that has already killed. We are trapped within her compelling, deranged consciousness and we like it, which is the true horror of the story.
Told in Abby’s snarky, sarcastic, and increasingly unstable voice, this tale of psychological horror goes to places that invoke many trigger warnings, even as readers will cackle along with Abby’s wry observations ... recommended for horror readers who like to see all of everyone’s issues eviscerated on the table and who won’t mind never again being able to eat chicken à la king after the novel’s disturbing take on it.
Hogarth's way with words enlivens every page of this psycho romp ... Her fearlessness and utter lack of inhibition animate the desperate longing and bitter trauma at the heart of this ghost story, administered with a steady drip of comic relief ... Profane, insane, hilarious, disgusting—and unexpectedly moving.
Hogarth turns the tale of a haunting on its head in a masterfully crafted horror novel that’s by turns humorous and deeply unsettling ... Abby makes a wonderful narrator; full of wry insights and frothy humor, she fully engages reader sympathies—until revelations about her childhood with her own mother suggest that she may be projecting her troubled emotions onto others. This dark domestic drama packs a punch.
