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The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman

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Fates and Furies meets Melancholia in this ominous and absorbing debut novel about marriage and motherhood in a time of ecological collapse, as mothers around the world begin to mysteriously vanish from their homes

Ada—a woman from Montreal living reluctantly in Michigan—vanishes from her bed one night while her husband Danny is asleep beside her, her young son, Gilles, in the next room. Desperate to locate Ada before Gilles understands what has happened, Danny begins a search. But the feds are already involved: across the country and around the world, mothers are vanishing from their homes.

Where did Ada go? What has she gone through? And how does the mystery relate to the forest that she seemed magnetically drawn to?
Confronting the role of motherhood and the meaning of home in the wreckage of capitalism and climate change, The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman is that rare, dazzling debut that is both thrilling and profound. It is a mystery, a play on myths of metamorphosis, and above all, a story of love—between husband and wife, mother and child—deeply troubled by the future we face.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 13, 2023

43 people are currently reading
9,369 people want to read

About the author

Molly Lynch

18Ìýbooks24Ìýfollowers

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5 stars
131 (22%)
4 stars
166 (28%)
3 stars
168 (29%)
2 stars
72 (12%)
1 star
39 (6%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 116 reviews
Profile Image for Jasmine.
277 reviews503 followers
May 30, 2023
The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman is a beautifully written debut focusing on climate change, motherhood, and mythology.

Mothers are vanishing across the globe. Ada has been keeping tabs on the disappearing women, constantly checking the latest news articles. Until one day, she disappears without a trace, leaving her husband and young son reeling.

While the feds investigate what’s behind these disappearances, the world is in the midst of ecological collapse.

This book is a fast read as the writing is clear, but it has some abstract themes. It’s not a book that will provide clear-cut answers. One of the final reveals left me stumped.

Ada is the most compelling yet mysterious character in this story. �

This novel touches on various topics, including climate change, racism, Greek mythology, and metamorphosis. It’s strange yet equally compelling. Some parts were downright chilling, others a bit of a mind bend.

I’d recommend this debut if you enjoy literary fiction mixed with mythological themes.

Thank you to Catapult for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Profile Image for Fran.
860 reviews13 followers
February 23, 2023
This is a quick read, with an intriguing title, cool cover and interesting premise. I’m sure there were lots of messages intended (feminism, destruction of the planet), but things became so convoluted that I can’t tell you if the main character experienced metamorphosis or psychosis. And I’m afraid I don’t care to figure it out…I’m just glad to be done with it.
Profile Image for Kim Lockhart.
1,219 reviews177 followers
August 7, 2023
What a remarkable, original novel!

I instantly loved the poetic writing. Molly Lynch expresses mood and atmosphere with an economy of well-chosen words. I found the descriptive scenes captivating: a reverberation like a voice from the hollow reeds of a marsh, a breathing darkness with the promise of a portal to another world, muddiness of a path squelching beneath one's boots like soft butter.

The beginning scenes provide a backdrop for the plot: a dark modern time of bad news around every corner, and no way to escape it. In the midst of this, mothers everywhere are disappearing without a trace, as if they walked into another dimension. Only some ever return.

Our MC, Ada, begins to have strange sensations, and rather than shake them off, she leans into them. She sometimes feels a stranger to herself. Each place she goes seems to be tuned to a different earth channel, causing a corresponding vibration in her body.

The anthropomorphic traits infused into the natural elements of the dark, the earth, and water, are unsettling and effective.ÌýÌý

There's a definite fluidity and ethereal character to this transitional stage of the story. Both the missing wives and the worried husbands have exhibited an increasing sense of disconnect, a lack of solidity, a loss of time, a feeling that their memories are either slipping or not their own.Ìý

What really struck me, were the ideas around transformation, states of being vs. societal roles, and the difference between what we perceive as the world vs. Planet Earth, or even the soil earth.

This novel had me thinking about all kinds of paradigms. Has it always been mothers who have guided us into the future all this time? And what if that future looks uninhabitable? Do mothers dissociate about bringing their children into that kind of future?Ìý

Or maybe, it's the emotional burden itself that needed to disappear, so that mothers could just enjoy their children without any intrusiveÌýthoughts about the state of theÌýworld getting in the way. They needed to be earth mothers, not world mothers.

The ending may seem open-ended, but I don't think it is. I have my own interpretation, though I think it could be considered spoilery, so I will separate it from the rest of the review, so you don't read it, if you'd ratherÌýnot.Ìý

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Okay, part of what I glean from the ending is that Mother Earth has beckoned Earth mothers, to show them the intricate interconnectedness of life, that we aren't separated at all, but rather part of the same whole. It is as if Earth has said: "As mothers, you ought to understand this best."
Profile Image for Michelle Waters.
41 reviews1 follower
Read
May 1, 2023
I enjoyed this a lot. First of all, all titles should be this good. Like, what is everyone else is even doing.

This is the first book I've read in a long time that deals with the ambivalence of motherhood in a way that feels convincing (I say this as a non-parent). It's not so much the role of mother Ada has a problem with: there's more to her issues than that. Climate change, international conflict, racism, and the unreasonable nature of borders of all kinds are on her mind, driving her—maybe—insane. On the other hand, the love she feels for her son is rendered so beautifully. I usually find myself looking to books about motherhood for answers about whether it will swallow me whole, and this one was oddly comforting in that regard.

Thank you to Catapult for the galley on Edelweiss!
Profile Image for Kayleigh.
53 reviews3 followers
October 6, 2024
Gripped me! Obvious yet mythical and just grabbed me. Quick read. (Our utopia is individual but the cause for dissociation is shared?)
Profile Image for Laura.
109 reviews
September 9, 2023
I loved this book. I read it in an evening and I can tell
I will continue thinking about it. The lush descriptions of nature and the simultaneous urge and fear of becoming feral and merging with the woods…wow. I feel that.

In many ways this reminded me of one of my favourite books, Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett. The descriptions of nature reminded me of the remoteness of the life described in that book, and the specificity with which the protagonists notice specific details about their surroundings. It also somewhat reminded me of No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, which I also loved, as both that book and this one deal with people who are intensely aware of the news and too much online and suffering as a result. And experiencing the world
through a lens that those around them do not entirely understand. All three of these books have strands of feeling uncomfortable in the world, pulling away, but simultaneously being deeply invested in everything going on in the world (though not in a healthy way). Like those books, this also gave me the feeling of reading thoughts I have had but never been able to articulate.

Reading this book felt like being sucked in to something mysterious, dark, and beautiful.
Profile Image for endrju.
388 reviews56 followers
June 27, 2023
The juxtaposition of a landfill and the protagonist's white cisheteronormative family home in the last three paragraphs of the novel bumped it to three stars. And a mention or two of Michel Foucault. Otherwise, it's a novel that doesn't know what to do with itself. At first, it seems it has a clear idea of critique of the state of the affairs, political, economic, ecological, gender relations within cisheteropatriarchal system etc. but it somehow loses the plot. Yes, women are leaving their posts as mothers (and in that regard, this one's much better than in problematizing the motherhood in the Anthropocene), but some of them return, and the protagonist goes and returns and goes and returns... and... what?
Profile Image for Kristina.
103 reviews
August 26, 2023
This book came to me precisely when I needed it, feeling an inevitable transformation, confusion, and immense love for such a flawed and wonderful world. Highly recommend for any mother in the midst of what’s a complicated time of life.
Profile Image for Jaksen.
1,559 reviews85 followers
Read
July 1, 2023
DNF

Just couldn't get into it.
Profile Image for Karen Goclowski .
40 reviews
July 31, 2023
I only made it about half way through this book. The lack of punctuation was driving me insane! I had no idea when someone was talking, who was talking and to whom they were speaking! This is the first book I have ever had to give up on. I tried really I did. I am so sorry!
Profile Image for annalise.
76 reviews
October 11, 2023
This book is haunting me. I am haunted by this concept. I feel like Ada and every other mother in this book. What a terrifying read.
Profile Image for Britt N.
362 reviews5 followers
July 17, 2023
Huh. I'm not entirely sure what it was that I just read. The story itself was interesting. I thought it would be more of the stereotypical thriller where a mother goes missing and then they have to search for her and figure out what happened, and while that did occur, it didn't really read like that.

I found some parts, especially in the beginning, where Ada and her line of thinking was a bit hard to follow. I didn't like this at first, but then I thought that it might be the author's way of writing out Ada's train of thought, as most people's train of thought is usually just ramblings that kind of make sense here and there.

I really enjoyed the book over all, and while it was interesting, there were definitely quite a few moments where I just had no desire to pick it up and read it. But I did really want to see what became of Ada.
Profile Image for Kristan Barczak (brewing_words_and_worlds).
6 reviews2 followers
January 8, 2024
Ada is a mother who cannot escape the constant thrum of her anxiety—much like myself and many other mothers I know. With the looming threat of climate change and the near-constant reminders of modern-day oppression and violence served up from cell phones, TV screens, and radios, Ada’s relationship with her role as a mother is intertwined with genuine fear for her son and the future he will (or perhaps won’t) have.

Although I find myself able to turn away from—or perhaps suspend—my fears so that I’m able to function, Ada seems incapable of doing this. To me, she represents the epitome of what happens when a privileged person commits to staring into the face of everything that is wrong with the world. She cannot fix it (and she’s not even always directly impacted by it), so she finds herself either frozen or frantic.

That is, until she disappears.

Ada’s story is haunting, and it leaves me with more questions than answers. The narrator is distant and unreliable, and Ada is a white liar in the same way that many of us are. She can’t articulate her truth, so she says nothing. Or she makes something up. This makes it difficult to decipher what happens to her, but I think that’s the point.

Besides, how would we truly ever figure out what’s happening to disappearing moms when we rarely believe women and mothers anyway?

The dialogue is written without quotation marks, which I think bothers some readers. But, for me, it serves the purpose well. It’s tough to get to know Ada, but Ada can hardly stand to get to know herself, so that makes sense. I also think the lack of quotation marks fosters the kind of dialogue that often happens in homes with children—disjointed and frequently interrupted.

Finally, I’m unsure if this was the author’s direct intention, but the overall novel has a thread of psychosis that runs through it. Almost as if it’s an interrogation of prolonged postpartum psychosis in a world unfit for mothering.

Are the moms alright? No.
But are the kids? Maybe.

All in all, 4 stars.

What I liked:
-Beautiful portrait of the relationship between a mother and her child
-Heart-wrenching prose that welcomes us to consider what it means to mother in a society that’s breaking
-The dialogue, which I know is kind of a hot take
-Suspense works well


What I wished for:
-More story within the ending. I don’t want to spoil anything within this review, but there were a few places, where I thought Lynch could give us a bit more without defeating her purpose, particularly around relationships
-More Gilles (the son)
-There were some places where I felt the story dragged just a little, but perhaps I was just uncomfortable, as Lynch may have wanted

If you're a mom who struggles with her decision to bring children into a breaking world, and you're okay with a little strangeness, this book is for you. I could see myself re-reading this again in the future.
Profile Image for Rachel Sawin-Vaughn.
323 reviews28 followers
December 11, 2023
Ada lives in suffocating anxiety around the future and her role as a mother raising the next generation in a world in constant crisis. We see her try to handle this until she becomes the most recent missing mother in an international trend of women mysteriously disappearing from their families. Her husband begins to look for her, but is also unmoored by her seeming willingness to walk away. This book is high on the existential vibes chart with a lot of abstract ideas around nature, mothering, adaptation, and transformation. I do think there are aspects of the story that flounder a little - the involvement of a female FBI agent never felt especially important to me and I personally didn’t really care about the women outside of Ada. But if you like (or can’t stop) thinking about human existence in a dying world and the often ignored power of nature then this one will be for you.
Profile Image for ¸éé²µ¾±²Ô±ð.
238 reviews10 followers
January 6, 2024
Wow, okay, this had me right up to the very end where maybe I’m just too dense to truly appreciate it or it took a weird turn, I don’t know.

To me, natural horror feels more accessible and immersive in ways that a lot of horror just can’t be. The feeling of dirt under your fingernails is apparently a more common recollection to have.

Similar sensory experiences were baked in and helped drive a lot of empathy for the plight of the main character who was fighting (or yielding?) to forces outside of her control.

Speaking of unknowable forces, the book’s approach to Artemis makes me want to look into the lore more. The act of surrender was described as an inevitability and maybe that was the main takeaway of it all?

I liked the pacing and the unreliability. The tension was really captivating, though I’m not sure the end was what I was expecting. I honestly don’t know what I thought would happen but more clarity would’ve been a treat.
Profile Image for Bandit.
4,874 reviews563 followers
February 14, 2023
Ah, what a strange book. I’m not opposed to strange but also not sure this one offered enough to counterbalance the strangeness.
The plot’s intriguing enough…women vanishing from their lives. Specifically, one of them, Ada, but all accounts an average wife and mother is only one too aware of the atmospheric changes around her.
The novel details her disappearance, her family’s coping with it, and more. Presumably, what it means to do is deconstruct the myth of nuclear family buy placing it into a suffocatingly devolving world and introducing a strange thing into it. The novel looks into what’s behind the vanishing, what presence and absence of Ada means for her family, for her life.
The novel is rather dense in style, an intense yet sleepy quality to its narrative and pacing. It’s certainly literary but it’s far from exciting. But then, it’s ecologically-conscious, feminist, and all sorts of woke in ways that modern audiences seem to crave or at least modern publishing has decided the audiences crave. So it’s definitely timely and rather interesting, but not necessarily and enjoyable or easily recommendable novel. It does read quickly, though. Thanks Netgalley.
Profile Image for Daria Oanes.
24 reviews
August 18, 2024
Really loved it for the first half but then the rest was just disappointing.

This was set up to be such a fresh read with a creative twist or commentary on motherhood and societal pressures of women, but it just fell so flat at the end without a resolution.

Also Ada is insufferable, but maybe that was the point?? I wish I could get it, but I just didn’t.
Profile Image for Laura.
141 reviews13 followers
August 9, 2023
I found the mystery of this really engrossing, and Ada’s feelings of despair and helplessness were all too relatable. But when the book tried to make bold, broad statements about womanhood and/or motherhood, it fell flat for me, as books that do so unfortunately often do.
Profile Image for Sara Crocker.
154 reviews2 followers
January 15, 2024
Not quite sure what to make of this. Impeccable title. Interesting commentary, but also not sure I actually get it. Oh idk, if you read it let's chat about it.
Profile Image for Kelly.
37 reviews10 followers
May 19, 2024
With the disclaimer that I read this coming off a French auto-fiction bender—I loved it. Felt myself becoming a voyeur of feeling. There was something almost too-close about the narration, like someone hovering a hand over your back.
4 reviews
October 14, 2024
The first half really had me! It reads like my brain works, a beautifully told story on fears of the modern world with an open ending
Profile Image for Kat872.
74 reviews
March 31, 2024
3.75 stars. A complex read. It lost me a little in part 2 but brought me back at the end.
8 reviews2 followers
August 28, 2023
finished this in Malta and now every time I swim in the sea I think she is trying to engulf me.
Profile Image for Adriane.
28 reviews2 followers
September 9, 2023
I really liked this....definitely spoke the psychic tension of being a mother/woman in a country that is hostile towards us, an unstable world ect. Its very dreamlike and doesn't provide any clear answers so that may bother some readers
Profile Image for Ian Mond.
677 reviews112 followers
Read
June 5, 2023
A hot and cold debut novel. Mothers have started vanishing from their homes, only to reappear several weeks later with no memory of where they’ve been. Ada is one such mother. Lynch does an excellent job of articulating Ada’s existential unease, the responsibility of being a mother and wife in a world sliding toward ecological catastrophe. At the same time, though, the phenomenon *only* affects married cis-women. Trans-men and single mothers need not apply. There’s enough ambiguity about the disappearances not to think that Lynch is making a political point here about motherhood and marriage. Intent aside, it’s a well-written novel with some genuinely affective, hallucinogenic scenes. It’s out this month.
18 reviews
July 6, 2023
Greek mythology. Mothers as an exploited resource in late-stage capitalism. A world slowly dying from climate change. Identity. The roles we play in life. Memory.

A strange and interesting book. It has definitely made me think and rend my own meaning from the narrative. The writing style is almost like a train of thought; scenes and POV's bleed into one another. I enjoyed this atmpospheric book.

41 reviews
February 12, 2024
I have to give this book a mixed review, more a 3.5 than a 3. The .5 is because it's well written. The title is great- it's very intriguing, although I'm not sure why the woman is terrifying. But the ending just dropped off abruptly, and the mysticism absolutely didn't work for me. The writer wanted to make big points, but those points were either obvious or unclear. In the end reading it was an unsatisfying journey that had highlights along the way.
Profile Image for Elizabeth.
80 reviews
October 10, 2023
I'll second another reviewer's comments by saying while I'm sure there were some messages woven into the storyline (e.g. feminism, climate anxiety) but instead I'm still not clear if Ada experienced metamorphosis or psychosis and don't really care to find out.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 116 reviews

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