My review of Mother Tongue by Naima Brown

Naima Brown’s ‘Mother Tongue’ is not the book I expected. After stumbling on the

recommendation from a BookTok creator, I couldn’t wait to dive into the story of the American stay-at-home mum, Brynn, who felt stuck in the wrong life until she suffered a brain injury and woke from a coma speaking fluent French. She saw a way out and took it, leaving behind her husband, Eric, and young daughter, Jenny, to build a new life.

‘Charlemagne said to speak a second language is to possess a second soul,’ her doctor told her (p. 94).

I was looking forward to an exploration of language and identity, of the hefty expectations we place on mothers that strip them of personhood, and the complexities of family estrangement and neglect. We get some of this, and when it appears, it is beautifully written.

Brynn grapples with the guilt of leaving her child behind and the desire for her unborn baby with her new husband to have Jenny as a sister. As readers, we emphasise with Brynn’s desire to flee Eric, but cannot forgive the neglect of Jenny, neither can Brynn:

‘She recalled her long-ago conversation with Dr Reyes, when he first told her about the idea of the second soul, how the idea had emboldened her. He’d been right. She felt entirely new in her French life, with her French soul ­– but had she thought there’d be no price to pay?’ (p. 235)

Unfortunately, the story completely derails when it shifts focus from here. The reader is forced to sit through Eric’s point of view as he ventures down the rabbit hole of racist extremism, preparing for an end-of-days civil war.

We also follow Brynn’s childhood best friend, Lisa, who has long had a crush on Eric, as she moves in with him and Jenny after the separation, taking on some kind of unpaid nanny role. It all gets very weird from there, but that doesn’t stop it from being entertaining.

By this point I felt like I was reading 2 different books at once: one about Brynn’s journey in France and another about Eric going off the absolute rails. I liked both books, but didn’t understand how they were connected.

My best guess about why the reader is forced so deeply into Eric’s disturbing psyche is to somehow force Brynn to face the fact that she left her daughter behind with a dangerous man. Although his more extreme beliefs intensified after their separation, we have good reason to believe from his actions during their marriage that she knew he was not a good person.

By the time Jenny turns 17, she seems to be the only rational character in the story, having a much better understanding of her father than Brynn or Lisa:

‘He hated so much of the world that Jenny was just getting ready to leap into. He hated whole groups of people she couldn’t wait to meet. Hated places she hoped to go. Hated ideas she was just starting to understand. Hated words she hoped to speak. He hated women, she sensed a long time ago, and she was becoming one. It was only a matter of time before he hated her, too.’ (p. 269-270)

Having built a captivating set of characters with countless plots, the ending of this story becomes more absurd with every detail as the author tries to bring it all back together. Jenny runs away to host a multi-day party at Eric’s weird end-of-days cabin, Brynn shows up heavily pregnant with her new French husband to help find her, and Jenny is so mad at all the adults that she jumps in a frozen lake and nearly dies (I think?) It makes no sense, but it didn’t matter to me. I was entertained, until I wasn’t.

It wouldn’t be sincere for the story to end with Brynn and Jenny forging a wholesome mother-daughter relationship again, but there should have been a point to all the pain Brynn caused. We’re given the impression that she was willing to live with, and learn from her mistakes to make things right with Jenny and be a better mother the second time around. It would have made for a nuanced, bitter-sweet ending for a complex set of characters.

Instead, the author pivots entirely and has Brynn hit her head yet again in the final pages, this time miraculously gaining fluent German and leaving her new family behind in search for a different life (yes, I am serious).

In an attempt to make this nonsensical twist profound, the characters around Brynn explain away her disappearance by deciding she is she is simply ‘rootless’; she cannot remain in one place, she cannot be clung to. It’s not in her nature.

The problem with this, aside it completely detracting from the original incident being extraordinary, is that the explanation is not true.

Brynn had roots with Eric and Jenny, she chose to abandon them. She grew new roots in France for over a decade with her husband and unborn child. She had a career, friends and a life, 2 lives even. Brynn may be selfish, but she is not rootless.

Readers are not owed happy or even complete endings, but I do believe they deserve one that makes sense, that provides a compelling conclusion to the story just read.

Instead, we’re told that despite being in her head for much of the book, Brynn is so complex that we didn’t really know her at all. It may be an interesting ending for a different story. This one already asked us to believe too much.