Mamma

Description

'Joanna sat with her cheek against her [Libby's] shining hair. She had hardly thought of Steven since he slammed his way out of the house, but now, welling up within her and pouring out over her love for Libby, came an intolerable flood of envy.' Widowed at 21 with a young baby, Joanna Malling finds her solitary existence upended twenty years later when her daughter Libby moves in with her new husband. At 35, Steven is closer in age to Joanna than Libby. What begins as an awkward relationship between mother and son-in-law evolves into something more intimate and Joanna must wrestle with re-awakened emotions and the conflict between desire and loyalty.

Diana Tutton (1915-1991) was a British writer whose novels focused on taboo relationships and family dysfunctionality. In the Second World War she drove a mobile canteen for the Women's Voluntary Services, before she married and followed her husband to Kenya for the rest of the War. Guard Your Daughters was published in 1953, followed by Mamma in 1956 and The Young Ones in 1959.