READERS GUIDE

Introduction

An Introduction to A Good Enough Mother

Ruth Hartland is an experienced therapist at the top of her game. The director of a renowned therapy unit for trauma victims, she is wise, intelligent, successful, and respected by her peers. But her calm professional demeanor belies a personal life full of secrets and sadness. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her son Tom, a beautiful but fragile boy who could never seem to fit in, disappeared eighteen months ago. So when Dan—a volatile new patient bearing an eerie resemblance to Tom—wanders into her waiting room, it’s not long before her judgment becomes clouded, boundaries are crossed, and disaster ensues. A fascinating family drama with a ticking time bomb at its core, Bev Thomas’s debut novel, A Good Enough Mother, is a powerful page-turner about motherhood, grief, obsession, and the importance of letting go.

A clinical psychologist herself, author Bev Thomas has in-depth knowledge of therapy and mental health, and takes readers inside Ruth’s head with rich detail and realism. Who among us hasn’t wondered what goes on in the private thoughts and life of a therapist? What is it like to be a sounding board for someone else’s troubles—and how do you deal with your own demons in the meantime? A deeply compelling narrator, Ruth is poised on the outside but troubled within, incapable of moving on, fixated on how she failed her son and whether he can be found. With her family in pieces and her marriage crumbling, Ruth finds her new patient Dan is both a balm and a landmine—he is clearly unstable and manipulative, but he is also the shadow son she might actually be able to save. As Ruth twists herself into knots about her duties as a mother and a therapist, she becomes frantic and reckless, events spiral out of control, and her once calm and orderly life is violently disrupted.
A Good Enough Mother will have readers on the edge of their seats, but it is also a brilliant, beautiful story of parenting, of how love consumes us, and how difficult it is to heal from tragedy, even when we must.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. Though we often put health professionals on a pedestal, Ruth battles her own demons from her childhood and is certainly not perfect; she’s a flawed individual and makes mistakes both as a parent and then, because of her grief, as a therapist. Do you think the author’s portrayal of Ruth—a person torn between her two selves—was believable? What do you think Ruth could have done differently?

2. The book deals with various themes—mental health, trauma, grief, motherhood, heartbreak, and emotional attachment to name just a few—did you connect with a specific topic or topics? Why or why not?

3. A Good Enough Mother delves into the complicated intersection of ethics and emotion. Working with, yet still remaining objective to, a patient who closely resembles your son is an impossibly difficult task. Was Ruth’s decision to work with Dan inappropriate from the get-go, or is she justified in taking him on? When did you think she began to behave inappropriately, if ever?

4. People are often curious about what goes on during the private, intimate conversations between therapists and their clients. At times in the novel, the reader is privy to interactions between staff and patients at the trauma clinic. Did you enjoy being a fly on the wall during these sections or did that make you uncomfortable—or both? Were you surprised by anything you “overheard” or noticed in these sections?

5. A Good Enough Mother is about complex relationships: between therapist and patient, between mothers and children, between husband and wife, between the private and the public. Do you think the author has done a good job exposing the layers inherent in these dynamics? Did it make you consider your own relationships differently?

6. Ruth is haunted throughout the book by her son’s disappearance; the hopes and terrors of motherhood that she experiences are laid bare for the reader to witness. Do you think she handled Tom’s childhood and subsequent loss as best she could? What would you have done in her place?

7. What did you think about the resolution of Tom’s story? Were you satisfied with how his story was resolved at the end?