Title: Matritto Motherhood
Author: Ameena Tabassum
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
Release Date: 11th October 2024
BLURB
In the town of Woking, a story of motherhood unfolds. At its core is Lucy, a fifteen-year-old girl labeled by society as a lost cause, a soul grappling with deep troubles, overshadowed by her mother’s battle with depression and alcoholism.
Under constant scrutiny from social services, Lucy and her half-sister strive to find stability in their fractured world.However, Lucy’s world takes an unexpected twist when she becomes pregnant at the age of fifteen.
This newfound circumstance casts a glaring spotlight on their family, fuelling suspicions of Lucy’s involvement with a South Asian gang. As a result, both the police and social services hone in on Lucy’s case, their attention now undivided.As her world collides with that of determined social worker Milly and Detective Sergeant David, a gripping tale of love, betrayal, and redemption unfolds.
A compelling narrative that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very end. Motherhood is a work of fiction that delves into the issue of child sexual exploitation in England, drawing inspiration from real-life cases involving South Asian gangs and the exploitation of young girls. Originally published in Bangla as Matritto in Bangladesh, the book has gained popularity and critical acclaim.
It was the book cover that first attracted my attention to the book, rather than using a real person photograph type cover it is a plain blue background and kind of the silhouette of a mother and baby. Once I read the blurb, I was even more interested remembering the Rochdale and Rotherham grooming scandals and arrests being on the news.
There are two female central characters in the book, two mothers, or rather one pregnant teen, and one mother of a teenage boy.
Lucy is the young teen who hasn’t had a great start in life, her mother is an alcoholic who suffers with depression and has attempted suicide twice already. Lucy has to fend for herself, take care of her younger half-sister Megan, as well as watch over her mother. Lucy has no one taking care of her or giving her love or attention which makes her quite the easy target for Sajid. Sajid is young, described as handsome in the book and owns and speeds around in a flashy sports car. Sajid is into making money through petty crime and selling drugs and he needs to build himself a little army to literally do his dirty work. Sajid turns his flashy smile on Lucy, flattering her, giving her lifts home etc until she’s literally hooked on being around him, the attention and affection he gives her and will do anything he asks of her, firstly just to please, then as time goes on to stop him being angry with her. Sajid “woos” Lucy, then first takes advantage of her himself sexually knowing full well she is underage. At times it’s almost believable from Lucy’s point of view that she is his girlfriend that they have a future together. Sajid talks about a future home together and their future family. He then uses his hold over her to get her to steal for him, sell drugs for him and then recruit others to steal and sell drugs for him too. When a drug deal goes bad Sajid isn’t the big fish in the little pond anymore, he owes bigger, more dangerous criminal, a gang leader money and needs to appease them in some way. That’s when connivingly talks Lucy into sleeping with one gang leader for him, he promises he will take her to the gang leader, she won’t be in danger and he will bring her home……Lucy believes him and though she doesn’t want to do it she agrees to sleep with the gang leader as she wants to please Sajid and stop him being so short tempered with her, maybe if she does this one thing, he will be less stressed and they can plan a future together. Only when Lucy arrives, there is the gang leader and his friends…..one by one they rape her. Lucy somehow holds herself together thinking it is all behind her until she finds out she is pregnant. Sajid clearly knew the situation he was taking Lucy into and seemingly didn’t care. Its then slowly Lucy begins to see him for the nasty, petty criminal he is. Sajid of course wants Lucy to get an abortion, he wants no evidence of what happened that night whether the baby is his or not. Lucy refuses and obviously school teachers spot that she is pregnant and call in social services.
That’s how Lucy meets Milly, who is a Bangladeshi social worker who is a single mother to a son around Lucys age. Milly came to England to be married to Hassan, a marriage arranged by her Uncle, supposedly a good match. It turned out that Hassan had his own issues, addictions and problems, which Molly put up with, tried to help with until Hassan became abusive towards her. Hassan even attacked Milly, kicking her in the stomach when she was 6 months pregnant with their son. Milly fled and Hassan hasn’t seen his son until recently contacting him saying he has changed. Milly hasn’t told their now almost 16 year old son Adib about the abuse she suffered so he agrees to meet his father.
Milly is tasked with finding out who the father of the baby is and what has been going on with Sajid etc. The Police already expect there may be a case of grooming and sexual exploitation such as the Rochdale and Rotherham cases. The Police Detective in charge is David, who is determined to crack this case, get Sajid and anyone else in the gangs put away and help the victim get justice and help to move on too. He also ends up taking quite a liking to Milly, who is extremely flattered and at a point in her life where she is thinking her son may soon leave, she will be alone, so perhaps she is ready for a relationship herself now. They start an at first secretive relationship together which when her son Adib comes home unexpected one evening and sees first Davids car, then the couple through the window causes Adib to jump to conclusions. Adib thinks his mother doesn’t care about him, thinks she wants him to go stay with Hassan and Hassan’s new family etc.
To say Milly is a social worker and supposed to be good at talking, especially to teens, she doesn’t communicate well with her own son Adib. Then when Adib sees his mother all smiling and happy talking to Lucy of course he becomes jealous over that. All this confusing and jealousy leads him to make a deal with an increasingly desperate to get the Police of her back Lucy.
I found Lucy and her story interesting and to be honest would have liked more of that. For example, her getting ready for trial and/or what happened, in her voice, when she had the baby. I thought it a shame that her friendship with Adib wasn’t explored further, maybe he could have supported her during her pregnancy, birth and building a new life afterwards or at least they would have kept in touch in some way. I thought the friendship that grew between David/Adib was well written and worked with the story well. The Hassan/Adib relationship was only ever mentioned in the book, we had no detail on the meetings that took place, though I guess the majority of the “Saturday meetings” were just a cover for Adib to secretly work his Saturday job whilst avoiding both parents.
Now I have to be honest I didn’t really like the David and Milly dynamic; it felt very Mills & Boon-esque in some places and in others it felt like David was grooming Milly!! It was totally believable when Milly broke off the relationship thinking that what her son wanted/needed her to do. I did think Milly and David made a likely, realistic couple but it felt a bit contrived, almost as if the romance was added to fill out the book more, it really didn’t need it.
I found the two letters that Lucy sent, one to Milly and one to Adib interesting and quite realistic. It was a shame as readers that we only accessed the letter Milly received. I think in the end Lucy showed that like Milly she was a strong woman who would do anything for her son. In fact, Lucy seemed to really have turned her life around, it would have been nice to read a little about that too. I think in the end Lucy ended up with a more mature attitude and outlook than some of the adults in the book.
My initial thoughts when the book ended where, Oh! Is that it? I had expected a bit more of a loose-ends being tied up for the different characters. There were the Police/court result parts but I felt there could have been more, maybe a separate epilogue. Even if it was just Adib reading the letter Lucy had sent him.
Summing up this book had some seriously hard-hitting sections, such as those with Lucy, her home life and how she came to be pregnant, then Milly, escaping an abusive relationship with her son & becoming a social worker to help others. Adib is a confused young man with still growing up dealing with his father suddenly turning up in his life. The racism that Lucy, Milly and Adib faced and had to deal with. Then there's romance between Milly & David, perhaps a little excessively sweet but fitted in with the plot.
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