Mother For Dinner by Shalom Auslander
This book is marmite and one that requires a strong stomach. It is an allegorical satire about an Am-Can family, the Seltzers, who gather at the bedside of their dying mother, Mudd, to hear her final request as she slips out of this life. Am-Can is the colloquial diminuitive for the family’s ethnic group: they are American Cannibals. Mudd’s final wish is simple: in accordance with the traditions of their community, she expects her sons, all twelve of them, to consume her body so that, as their lore sets out, she will never die but live on in them.
Auslander is an American Jew, who grew up in an orthodox community. He has, therefore, a good handle on the anchor provided by a community rooted in a centuries’ old lifestyle and practices; there is a comforting security and a stultifying lack of progress. In this allegory, set in modern day America, Auslander is not specific about whom the Am-Cans represent. Their traditions and practices are unique but reflect the mindset of any number of contemporary cultural groups who define themselves with a specific, exclusive identity that revels in its distinctiveness and opposition to the cruel world around them. As a consequence, Mudd who is the family’s most ardent adherent of the Am-Cans’ founding myths, rituals and traditions, hates, fears and distrusts Jews, Blacks and all those groups and people she considers other – in other words, anyone not Am-Can.
When Mudd’s sons gather around her bedside, we find out that most of them are estranged from their home and have rejected the traditions and practices that their mother has unquestioningly lived by. When, on her deathbed, she allocates different body parts that she expects her sons to eat after her demise, in line with her fundamentalist interpretation of Am-Can practices, it seems unlikely that they will fulfil her dying wish. Her sons are all given a number according to the chronological order of their birth.
Auslander makes it clear that the Am-Cans’ beliefs, like those of so many of these traditional communities, are rooted in misogyny and patriarchy as Mudd’s only daughter is named Zero.
The main protagonist of the story is Seventh, who is one of her estranged sons. He is a compromiser and a peacemaker but he has rejected his past and the whole notion of being tied down by the constraints of a fixed identity. He is a publisher and family man who has kept his past secret from his wife. However, his kindly nature brings him to Mudd’s bedside and he valiantly attempts to herd his brothers into behaving with the appropriate decorum as Mudd passes away. What Auslander does next, with some skill, is to show how Seventh feels the power of the traditions and customs he reluctantly takes part in and is gradually drawn into a defensive sense of belonging and continuity that they represent. The story then becomes about Seventh and how he is forced to confront the lure of his roots pitted against the lure of the life he has built for himself in modern America.
Through the family discussions around Mudd’s corpse, Auslander explores many of the modern arguments about identity and culture that were fought in the last American election and to some extent in our 2019 election, when the Red Wall constituencies rejected the cultural elitism of Corbyn’s Labour Party. The whole spectrum of opinion is covered by the brothers, including those who have stayed in the community and are living by the Am-Can doctrines to those who have, like Seventh, adapted to the modern world to those who have adopted new faiths (Judaism) and new identities (transsexuality).
So, after all that, should you read this book? Well, I didn’t attend the book group where this was discussed but my friend Chris assured me that it engendered a lively debate. That was because, like all the best book group choices, this story divided opinion, with both detractors and supporters having a strong response to the devouring of Mudd. I guess you’ll have to decide if you’re willing to be amused or stimulated or challenged or repulsed. However, if you’ve got a book group coming up, perhaps you should choose mother for dinner for a discursive feast.