No Love Is Greater Than a Parent's Love
In the winding novel No Love Is Greater Than a Parent’s Love, a motivated young mother builds a hopeful future for herself and her son.
Mirjana Vincic Katic’s empathetic historical novel No Love Is Greater Than a Parent’s Love traces the aftermath of a young single woman’s pregnancy in 1970s Ontario.
Mary is the daughter of a stringent, alcoholic steelworker and an acquiescent mother. An outstanding student, Mary aspires toward a life that is more enlightened than her upbringing. But then a tryst with a lover results in pregnancy—and a need for redirection when her lover moves away and her unforgiving family disowns her. With her neighbor’s help, Mary reconnects with her aunt, Connie, who agrees to shelter her so long as Mary abides by certain rules.
Mary’s conversations with Connie are straightforward at first. Mary is grateful to have been taken in; she takes on domestic tasks and finds a job before giving birth. And as Mary and Connie become acquainted with one another, warmth develops between them.
The book’s focus on the topic of unwed motherhood is quite intense. In service of this are brisk explanations about how Mary arrived at her situation. In the process, many cast members are only sketched in—introduced in terms of their looks, with their defining traits stated outright. Subtlety is sacrificed as the novel rushes through its scenes (including one covering a sudden death), evading insights and a true sense of growth. There are forceful narrative detours that cover repeated mistakes; people share improbable revelations as well.
In the end, Mary is a heroine who is too subject to the whims of others; her circumstances seem fated. And as Mary moves from self-recrimination to confidence, the stages of her own growth are also flattened, as if seen from a distant outsider’s perspective and interpreted in terms of how an eighteen-year-old might respond to such challenges.
With supportive, generous friends and neighbors around her, Mary’s setbacks are minimized. She prepares meals, tends to her baby, and goes about her day, sometimes wondering what her future might hold. Her parents continue to shun her. She seems to accept these circumstances for what they are, and tension is lost in the process. Still, her situation is not treated as a bleak one, and her community rallies around her in a refreshing way. She’s set adrift once more, though, when her son reaches school age, at which time the novel reintroduces episodic challenges and skips through time, seeing him into adulthood.
In the winding novel No Love Is Greater Than a Parent’s Love, a motivated young mother builds a hopeful future for herself and her son.
Reviewed by
Karen Rigby
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