'Neva Bradley, a third-generation midwife, is determined to keep the details surrounding her own pregnancy - including the identity of the baby's father - hidden from her family and co-workers for as long as possible.
'Her mother, Grace, finds it impossible to let this secret rest, even while her own life begins to crumble around her.
'For Floss, Neva's grandmother and a retired midwife, Neva's situation thrusts her back 60 years in time to a secret that eerily mirrors her granddaughter's-a secret which, if revealed, will have life-changing consequences for them all.' (Publication summary)
'What is of interest to me about Sally Hepworth is how she, as a commercial writer using the popular literary genre of women's fiction- and who told Terri Barnes that "the goal of writing for me has always been to entertain-takes up the central concepts of contemporary maternal theory to trouble normative meanings and practices of motherhood and family. This article explores how Hepworth breaks these normative rules in her use of the theoretical concepts of matrifocality, motherlines, and the mask of motherhood. The two novels upon which I focus both employ an emphatic matrifocal perspective. In The Secrets of Midwives (2015), the motherline repositions women from a heterosexual allegiance to a matrifocal one and rescripts family as a relation of choice and commitment rather than one of biology. In The Family Next Door (2018), the unmasking of motherhood excavates the lived realities of mothering to counter normative motherhood and make possible an empowered maternal authenticity.' (Publication abstract)
'What is of interest to me about Sally Hepworth is how she, as a commercial writer using the popular literary genre of women's fiction- and who told Terri Barnes that "the goal of writing for me has always been to entertain-takes up the central concepts of contemporary maternal theory to trouble normative meanings and practices of motherhood and family. This article explores how Hepworth breaks these normative rules in her use of the theoretical concepts of matrifocality, motherlines, and the mask of motherhood. The two novels upon which I focus both employ an emphatic matrifocal perspective. In The Secrets of Midwives (2015), the motherline repositions women from a heterosexual allegiance to a matrifocal one and rescripts family as a relation of choice and commitment rather than one of biology. In The Family Next Door (2018), the unmasking of motherhood excavates the lived realities of mothering to counter normative motherhood and make possible an empowered maternal authenticity.' (Publication abstract)
