Mass Mothering

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A haunting, indelible novel of collective grief, resistance, and the radical, life-affirming virtue of testimony A. is an amateur translator, living alone in an unforgiving, late-capitalist metropolis. Adrift and burdened by debt following a medical trauma, she makes rent caring for a young boy who is not and could never be her own. Her nights are spent on the dance floor, chasing spontaneous connection. There, she encounters N., who shares her numbed state and sometimes her bed. Among N.'s meager possessions, A. comes across a slim book about an unnamed foreign town of disappearing boys. The book, Field Notes , documents the stories of a community of mothers who assemble to mourn their missing sons together. A. is transfixed by this collective chorus of primal grief, the mothers' preternatural strength, and their intuitive care for one another. When a near-assault stuns A. out of her inertia, she takes off for the city where Field Notes was written in