Motherfaker – Anna Brook-Mitchell

I’m a sucker for any book with a punny title, and when I saw Motherfaker – with that almost-curse and the bright pink cover and the wild premise – pop up on the Libro.fm app, I knew immediately that I had to read it.

Barri Brown is a bitter high school English teacher, living on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel. She’s recently been abandoned by her husband, who also remortgaged their house without telling her. She’s desperate to get away from the small town island politics and travel the world, maybe settle in Edinburgh where no one knows her and she can start fresh… but she needs the money and the freedom to do it.

An impulsive idea strikes her in a moment of desperation: she will fake a pregnancy, in order to take advantage of her employer’s generous parental leave allowance (not to mention finally balancing the ledger of all the times she’s covered for colleagues with kid emergencies). That’s how Barri becomes a Motherfaker: “I used to be a DINK. Now I’m a SIFK (Single Income, Fake Kid),” as she puts it.

Yes, it’s a madcap comedy with crazy situations and hilarious mishaps, but it’s also a surprisingly insightful novel.

Barri reads as possibly neurodivergent, with her sensory sensitivities, difficulties reading social cues, and overdeveloped sense of justice. As a result of her prickly nature, she’s profoundly lonely, but doesn’t necessarily recognise herself to be so (in a very Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine way). The only way she finds the community and connection she needs is by becoming “pregnant” – which is, in itself, a really interesting social commentary. Women are rewarded for playing their socially ordained roles, and punished for choosing otherwise for themselves. Plus, for fellow childless readers, Barri’s experiences highlight the ways in which society responds to pregnant women (good and bad).

And, even with all that, Brook-Mitchell managed to work in a couple of twists that I didn’t see coming. Motherfaker really is the whole package: a fun and funny novel about a contemporary social issue that will make you think and take you by surprise.

Read Motherfaker on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)