#Titanuary ‘What Kind Of Mother’ by Clay McLeod Chapman

About the book…

After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market.

It’s there that she connects with old high school flame Henry McCabe, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son, Skyler, went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure Skyler is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise. As she follows the thread of these visions, Madi discovers a terrifying nightmare waiting at the center of the labyrinth—and it’s coming for everyone she holds dear.

‘What Kind Of Mother’ is due to be published on January 31st by Titan Books, and belongs to a new strand of novels which I refer to as WTAFDIJR*

You will say this multiple times throughout this extraordinary tale of grief, longing, and the power of love ensconced, lovingly in a tale of madness and Southern noir fiction.

Firstly, you are introduced to Madi, a single mother battling her worthless ex who didn’t want to know when she was a 17 year old that he had knocked up, but now he has found religion, suddenly Donnie has also re-discovered a sense of obligation towards his offspring which drives a wedge between mother and daughter.

She hustles palm readings in the farmer’s market of her home town, the place she left and swore she would never return to. Only one thing would bring her back, her daughter.

A chance meeting with an old flame brings a tale of tragic and epic disaster bubbling to the surface-the ‘one who got away’, Henry McCabe, is mired in a hellscape following the disappearance of his 8 month old son, Skyler.

As she tries to use her intuition and talent to persuade to bring him some peace, she becomes inextricably entwined with supernatural events, both internal and external manifestations of the rot which festers and bubbles below the surface of a small town, filled with small minds.

This is what Clay encapsulates perfectly, that sense of failure in returning to somewhere you swore you never would, the flow of the current which pulls you there, and if not careful, pulls you under.

He also writes so convincing from the perspective of a woman, the expectations made on her by society at large and what happens when you fail, or even worse, meet their extremely low expectations of you. This is particularly evident in the pity the women ‘esteemed’ in Brandywine society, the ones who visit her stall and her hotel room parlour, yet still see themselves above her. Madi uses their twisted sense of their own importance to inform her readings, and yet, it opens a potal to visions and dreams that attack her without mercy. And all this does is fuel the notion that she can find the missing Skyler, succeed where all others have failed.

It manages to be deeply disturbing, whilst filled with the desperate sadness of lost love , as the needs of 2 deeply abandoned individuals , seeking solace and release in each other, and that space where they come together, creates something very, very disturbing indeed.

Full of beautiful imagery surrounding the fishing and crabbing industry of the American South, creating vivid analogies of the metamorphosis of a soul, this is an incredible, powerful, horrific novel that deserves to fly high

Still reeling

*What The Actual Fuck Did I Just Read

About the author…

Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of “‘The Pumpkin Pie Show’” and the author of ‘Rest Area’, Nothing Untoward, and The Tribe trilogy.

He is the co-author, with Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, of the middle grade novel Wendell and Wild.

In the world of comics, Chapman’s work includes Lazaretto, Iron Fist: Phantom Limb, and Edge of Spiderverse.

Twitter @claycleod @TitanBooks

Links-http://claymcleodchapman.com/