A House For Happy Mothers

Author: Amulya Malladi

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 4 out of 5

Date Started: 11 July 2021

Date Finished: 15 July 2021

This book was recommended by Goodreads, and the synopsis sounded interesting. I also like to read books written by authors I have never read before.

The book is about two women, one who lives in California wanting to have a child, and the other Asha, who is in India, poor and living with her husband and two kids.

The story starts with Priyasha, who is in California with her husband Madhu. She desperately wants a child goes through IVF treatments and has three miscarriages. The couple decides to have a child through surrogacy. Asha lives in a village in India, with her husband Pratap, who is a painter, and her two kids Manoj and Mohini. To get more money for Manoj's education, Asha decides to be a surrogate.

The book takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of all sorts of emotions. Priya, who wants to have a child with Madhu, feels guilty of putting someone through pregnancy and risks and feels that she is selfish. Priya's mother Sushila, who goes by Sush, is against surrogacy and reasons that it is exploiting the poor. The author also has done a great job of giving the details of the relationship between Madhu and Priya. The stress, the fights due to Priya's obsession to have a baby, and the stress that comes from the friends who have children.

Priya loses her job and visits India to be with Asha two months before the due date and she realizes that it is her duty to help Asha's family. She collaborates with a family friend to get Manoj into a boarding school for better education. Asha's emotions towards the baby are well expressed. She carries the baby for nine months and feels the baby kick, but she is aware of the fact that the baby is not hers in the end. Asha constantly dreams of having a home for herself and the family and her son Manoj gets a better education with the money she would make from the surrogacy.

There were some inconsistencies in the book, one of which stood out. In the beginning, the author says that Sush does not like to shorten Priyasha's name as everyone else does, but when she meets General Parikshit's family, she introduces her daughter as Priya!

No particular character stood out for me to obsess or like in the entire book. I felt out of all the characters, I liked Madhu the most. He seemed very practical and supportive. He too wanted a child but was not obsessed like Priya was, and had made peace with the situation that they were unable to have a child. He sounded level-headed in every situation as well.

There was no specific story as such in the book, but just an emotional roller coaster ride of motherhood, surrogacy, and feelings of anxiety of the parents who opt for surrogacy. This book gave me a lot of information about how surrogacy works and how the poor are exploited. It also gave me an insight into how parents who opt for surrogacy behave as well. Some really want to have a connection and bond with the surrogate mothers, but some choose not to be in touch at all. The thoughts and feelings of surrogate mothers are hard to understand. Even though they are paid, some women tend to (at least as mentioned in the book) move on easier than others.

Favorite lines from the book:

• "It takes years. It costs so much money. And you don't know what blood you bring home." "You bring home a kid," Madhu said.
• India was tough on the nerves if you hadn't grown up there.
• It was one thing to have always been single - then you didn't know what you were missing - but it was another to have been so deep into a marriage, into a relationship, and then find that part of your soul ripped out.