As part of Lit Society’s Book Review Program, members are reading and reviewing books by independent writers we think deserve more attention. This review reflects one reader’s honest experience and aims to spotlight exciting new voices.
Big Take? Heavy Cream is a layered love story of abandonment, mental illness, chosen family, and reinvention. If you like books about unconventional families, buckle up.
- Would You Recommend It? Yes
- Book Club Worthy? Yes
- Would You Read This Author Again? Yes
- Did It Change How You See Something? Yes
- Is It More Plot or Ideas? A combination of the two
- Pace: Steady
- Emotional Impact: Devastating
- Best For: Deep thinking, quiet weekend
- Skimmable or Demands Attention? Close reading
- Would You Reread It? Yes
Reading Heavy Cream was like holding your breath underwater. At the heart of the story is the question of how we define ourselves and how we come into our own. Are we defined by the people around us? Or do we have the ability to reshape our lives and start brand-new?
Sixteen-year-old Gerry has been abandoned by her dysfunctional and unpredictable mother, Helene. For her entire life, Gerry has never known stability: she and her mother have spent her life moving from home to home, state to state. Homeschooled by her mother, Helene blindly hands out A’s on every assignment, more focused on chasing men than on her daughter’s education. This time, Helene decides to chase a man all the way to Australia. Gerry is not part of the plan.
Helene’s departure is sudden and jarring, even after 50 pages of her maternal neglect. Gerry finds herself living with her longtime friend Bonnie in Connecticut, with only $100 in cash and no idea when her mother will return, and yet she stays impressively composed through her abandonment and the changes in her guardianship that follow.
When Bonnie becomes involved with a man (sense a theme?), she ships Gerry off to live with her mother’s sister, Nell, in downtown Manhattan. This is another jarring transition for Gerry and the reader alike. Nell is an eccentric artist type who has a strained relationship with Helene, so it is awkward for both Nell and Gerry to suddenly find themselves playing happy family. It is through Nell that we meet yet another central figure: Finley, a wealthy Upper East Side woman who takes a liking to Gerry. Without spoiling the story, Finley might just be the mother figure Gerry has needed her entire life.
Redefining the “chosen family” trope, Heavy Cream follows Gerry as she is raised by Bonnie, Nell, and Finley, whose eccentricities are a testament to Sarah Blakely-Cartwright’s ability to write complex characters. While Gerry may not have chosen these women as stand-in mothers, the bonds they build evolve into a beautiful journey tracing Gerry’s coming-of-age from an abandoned teen to a young adult supported by not one but three unorthodox mothers.
And in the process, we come to love our narrator, Gerry. She's often so levelheaded that I had to remind myself that she is, in fact, still a child. Though we do get occasional glimpses of the impact of her mother’s disappearance: “My thoughts cartwheeled like a gymnast. So many times over the past two months I’d felt elated to be free of my mother. And then, only hours later, the elation curdled: This fucking bitch abandoned me.” But more often than not, she’s gracious toward her ever-changing guardians, recognizing that these women come with their own quirks and flaws. Bonnie, Nell, and Finley may not get it right every time, but at least they are trying to parent her.
I’ve read 109 books this year, and Heavy Cream is among my favorites. It’s so many things at once: heartbreaking, funny, thoughtful, and unpredictable. Blakley-Cartwright never fully explains Helene’s behavior, although it is implied that she suffers from a mental illness. And maybe that’s the point: as dramatic and life-changing as maternal abandonment may be, Gerry realizes Helen’s life does not have to define her own. She gets to live separate from her mother’s dysfunction. She gets to change the trajectory of her life. She gets to be a different person from her mother.
Favorite Lines?
“Maybe it was her black magic, her spell-casting, her ability to wield power from ten thousand miles away. Or maybe not. Maybe it was the most elemental thing in the world, a child missing her absent parent. I was a bird fallen from the nest. Mother! Mother!”
“Nell was alone for the sake of her work. Bonnie had been alone because men took advantage of her. Finley had been left alone by what she had lost. My mother was alone because, like a roughstock horse, she kicked everyone off her back. I wondered if I would ever catch the bug.”
“Maybe my mother was wrong about me. Maybe I couldn’t live in the way I’d been raised. Maybe I wasn’t meant for righteous mayhem.”
Recommended Media?
📚Motherf*cked by Ashley Oerman. If the theme of mother issues hit home for you, this recent release will make you feel less alone, offering helpful tips for coping.
📚The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. A heartbreaking book with a major plot point that feels both real and dystopian. If the authorities in Chan’s novel were to appear in Heavy Cream, it’s safe to assume Gerry’s mother, Helene, would have followed the same path as Frida, Chan’s protagonist.
📚I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy. This memoir sold out everywhere the week it was released nearly four years ago. It goes without saying that people have thoughts on mothers and motherhood.
Interested in purchasing Heavy Cream? Support Bond & Grace and purchase the book via Bookshop here.
