Book Review: Songs My Mother Taught Me

Reviewed by S.A. Evans

A journey through parenthood in lyrical sentimentality

Songs My Mother Taught Me is a thoughtful exploration of family dynamics and the value of life lessons being passed down through the generations. 

The story is set up with Kim, a cellist-turned-lawyer, who finds life not quite as she dreamed, especially after she becomes pregnant to an abusive man. Her journey (and her friends’ and family’s journeys) move through the ups and downs of life—things that remind her of the songs her mother taught her over the years.

Now divorced from her abusive ex-husband Larry, Kim is standing at an airport with her young son Nathan as she prepares him for his court-ordered trip to his father’s house. To retain some control over the situation, Larry has managed to get custody visits with his son. 

Since Larry can’t be bothered to pick his son up from the airport himself, he has his long-term fiancé Leeza do it for him. Once Nathan is in the arms of Leeza, Kim remains at the airport to gather herself.

“You can never make people do the right thing all the time, even when you spell it out. They just don’t notice, or don’t care.” 

From there, Kim tries to steady herself and make sense of the world around her and how she got here. In flashbacks, we see Kim’s family history with her older sister Karen and their mother Bobbie. Bobbie had been critical of Kim’s life choices, and Karen believes it’s because Kim and their mother are so similar.

The plot really picks up when, during the divorce process with Larry, she starts to date John. Soon enough, Kim and John are engaged over the phone and get married three weeks later. The plot jumps back and forth in time and ultimately sees Kim adjusting to new changes as her family grows, as their careers change, and as the people around them weave in and out of their lives. John and Kim have each other and their children. Together they can face anything. Seems pretty nice, right?

The sentimentality is what really drives this novel—it’s a fantastic feeling when concerning family dynamics and navigating life as a unit. Part two sees those sentimental moments kick up into high gear. I went from feeling slightly indifferent to feeling so much sadness for the family and wanting nothing more for them than to find a way to heal and come back together from it. 

Another thing this book does well are the songs themselves. Since music is a big part of Kim, Karen, and Bobbie’s lives to varying degrees, lessons are called songs. When Nathan is still young and adjusting to the custody visits with Larry, Kim remembers the song, “The truth of the matter was that motherhood was an education in all things in life against which you could not protect your child—which was most of them.” 

Kim sees John as a reliable and steady force in her life—“In our ocean bedroom, we were a little raft in calm seas, and he was my anchor” —but once we get to the end of part one, we witness a moment where she allows herself to think more fully about the marriage (that she refers to as a “real marriage”). 

Kim thinks to herself, “No matter how long you’ve been married, there was a whole swath of your life forever cloaked from your spouse, a private universe, richly stocked and peopled, that you could never share.” This thought foreshadows how Kim will think of their marriage going forward, and it’s complemented by the song Bobbie sung years ago, “So much of marriage is dumb luck.” Through these very real feeling characters, readers see how you can lose yourself in marriage and how hard it can be to keep a family together in the face of tragedy and change.

The structure of the novel did find me lost a few times, unsure whether I was in the present or past or how much time had gone by since the last scene or chapter. Since the story is told over so many years, it amounts to a lot of time jumps and a lot of characters as well.

Songs My Mother Taught Me is a moving story of parenthood. I’ve never felt so much of a parent’s struggle in a book like I have with this one. This novel demonstrates the complexity of familial connections and how they impact us well into adulthood and parenthood.

If you love literary fiction that makes you want to reach through the pages and give the characters a great big hug, definitely check out Songs My Mother Taught Me.

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