Otherhood

A Novel

William Sutcliffe

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• eBook ISBN:
  9781635573862
• Year: 2019

In this witty novel--originally published as Whatever Makes You Happy--that inspired Netflix's major motion picture Otherhood, three mothers try to save their grown sons from themselves.

Gillian, Helen, and Carol are three suburban mothers who have known each other since their respective sons were babies, and have met in a regular coffee group for years. These days, their sons are a bunch of thirty-four-year-old slackers: they have no wives and no children, never call, and seem unlikely to outgrow their post-adolescent lifestyles anytime soon. After yet another fruitless Mother's Day, Carol has an outlandish but irresistible idea: each woman will go drop in on her son for an unexpected weeklong visit and find out what's really keeping him from responsible adult life. Together, and with mixed success, the mothers set out to whip their sons into shape.

Laugh-out-loud funny and remarkably insightful about family life, Otherhood will appeal to parents who yearn for a closer relationship with their adult children, and for the younger generation who seem to want the opposite, but will never quite relinquish the hope that their parents will swoop in and make everything better.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Carol and Matt: seven frozen lasagnes
• awkward breakfasts
• Helen and Paul: a little more oomph
• the two best things that ever happened to her
• eccentric and vaguely unwholesome groups
• Gillian and Daniel: why is not having a lemon typical?
• Two Weeks Earlier: Mother's Day
• Carol and Matt: waxy pallor
• at a stroke, he was twelve
• Helen and Paul: the unexploded bomb
• what do you just want?
• Gillian and Daniel: we're splitting up and you're thinking about sex
• one last lap of honour
• Carol and Matt: one who'd turn up in a public place
• Helen and Paul: now we're arguing about it
• a rougher game than you wanted
• Gillian and Daniel: sickening overtones of farce
• you don't know anything about anything
• Carol and Matt: it's a test
• fresh, open and dreamy
• Helen and Paul: that's not the arrangement
• it all sounds very modern
• Gillian and Daniel: her salt on his tongue
• Carol and Matt: I can read you like a magazine
• how to come across as vaguely socially acceptable
• Helen and Paul: a nice big stone
• beyond love
• Gillian and Daniel: you cannot know the egg in one step
• but I remember less often
• Carol and Matt: a little pride
• character assassination called flirtation
• Gillian and Daniel: pragmantic
• Helen and Paul: not a woman he knew
• One Year Later: whatever made him happy
• Acknowledgements
• A Note On The Author
• eCopyright