Mother Is Watching

Brown (Recipe for a Perfect Wife) successfully blends horror and science fiction to offer a peek into an all too plausible dystopian future. A recent pandemic has devastated male fertility rates and led to extreme population decline. In its wake, pressure is placed on women to have as many children as possible, with wearable AI fertility trackers used to monitor women’s menstrual cycles. Against this backdrop, art conservator Mathilde Crewson balances her job with raising a young daughter, Clementine, grieving a recent miscarriage, and desperately trying to conceive another baby with her controlling husband, Wyatt. Mathilde receives the assignment of her dreams when she is tasked with restoring a painting titled The Mother by an obscure artist who died violently. After getting pregnant, finishing her new assignment before giving birth becomes a race against time—but sinister things start happening as her work progresses, all perhaps connected to the possibly haunted painting. The danger and mystery only increase as Mathilde begins to doubt her own perceptions. Brown packs a lot into the narrative and there are some loose threads left dangling at the end, but, for the most part, it all comes together beautifully. A riveting and insightful ghost story about parental grief and bodily autonomy, this is sure to linger with readers long after the final page. (Mar.)