Of all the books I read this month, the one I’m still thinking about is The Collective by Alison Gaylin. The story follows Camille Gardener, who finds a group called the Collective in her search for justice after the death of her teenage daughter. Ostensibly a support group for grieving mothers, the Collective quickly proves to be much more.
The story required a bit more suspension of disbelief than I could muster, but I still found it intriguing. Camille’s experiences as a grieving mother—the experiences of all the grieving mothers in the story—say something about our society’s expectations of grief. Namely, that society’s expectations of grief are unrealistic. Nobody gets over the death of a loved one, especially the death of a child, quickly. Yet society expects the grief-stricken to “move on” within a matter of weeks. No wonder the mothers in this story find solace in the Collective. It’s the one place they feel understood, the one place their grief is valid.
There were parts of the book that did not ring true for me, but it was the food for thought in the premise that made this the best book I read this month.
