Seven dark novels about motherhood

Zach Vasquez is a native of Los Angeles, California. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Little White Lies, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Full Stop, and other publications.

At CrimeReads he tagged six dark titles about motherhood, including:

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn

In Flynn’s debut novel, a troubled reporter returns to her small Missouri hometown to investigate the gruesome murder of two teenage girls and ends up discovering the truth behind her own late sister’s death, as well as the physical and psychological harm currently being inflicted on her much younger half-sister.

At the center of it all is Adora Crellin, an aristocratic businesswoman from genteel stock who, along with being the protagonist’s mother, is also the matriarch of the town in which the novel is set. The scars—both literal and figurative—that the outwardly cold, but deeply unhinged Crellin has inflicted on both her daughters and her neighbors are eventually revealed in a series of devastating revelations.

While not as deliciously evil or charismatically brassy as some of the other mothers on this list, Adora Crellin (who would be brought to life by Patricia Clarkson in the 2018 HBO miniseries adaptation of the novel) stands as one of the most legitimately unnerving.

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

Sharp Objects is among Christina Dalcher's seven crime books that challenge the idea of inherent female goodness, Nicole Trope's six domestic suspense novels where nothing is really ever what it seems, Heather Gudenkauf's ten great thrillers centered on psychology, and Peter Swanson's ten top thrillers that explore mental health.

--Marshal Zeringue