Shapeshifting, Michelle Ross — Review by Diane-Lyn

Hello, and welcome to The Cozy Book Blog by Diane-Lyn. I am thrilled to be today’s stop in the book tour for Shapeshifting by Michelle Ross. Many thanks to Lisa Munley at TLC Book Tours for the invite. I was provided with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Enjoy! Best, Diane-Lyn

Synopsis:

Shapeshifting: The fourteen spellbinding stories in Michelle Ross’s second collection invite readers into the shadows of social-media perfectionism and the relentless cult of motherhood. A recovering alcoholic navigates the social landscape of a toddler playdate; a mother of two camps out in a van to secure her son’s spot at a prestigious kindergarten; a young girl forces her friends to play an elaborate, unwinnable game. With unflinching honesty and vivid, lyric prose, Ross explores the familial ties that bind us together-or, sometimes, tear us apart.

Review by Diane-Lyn:

The enormity of motherhood. The complexities of families. The dynamics, social pressures, and harsh judgements; all coming head to head with painful histories, ongoing inner battles, and our own flaws. The constant effort to get it right, followed by those never-ending reminders of how we have, once again, come up short. And oh, that mother down the street; the one who has seemingly perfected this monumental undertaking called motherhood. You know, that one who is always composed and smiling with the perfect figure, the perfect house, the perfect children. The living, breathing evidence of what parenting “should” look like.

Shapeshifting brings these unspoken struggles to the table, And the truth is, every mother has them. The Sand and Sea illustrates the effects of having a negligent mother, and the lasting impact of toxic motherhood through generations. “I wonder”, the narrator reflects, “if I could travel back in time and mother my mother, would everything have turned out different?” 

Likewise, in Lifecycle of an Ungrateful Daughter, the product of an alcoholic, abusive mother struggles to navigate her way through marriage and motherhood, trying to avoid having history repeat itself. However, she has difficulty connecting with her own daughter and battles depression which, like any mental illness, is ever present and colors all areas of her life. Eventually, her husband leaves her for another woman. During the holiday season that year, she offers to fly her three children, now adults, out to her new place to celebrate Christmas together. Her daughter accepts the invitation, but the other two decline and she is devastated. When her daughter arrives for the holiday, her mother is so depressed that she spends the entire four day visit in bed, leaving her daughter to fend for herself. The two have very little contact in the years that follow.

In After Pangaea, a young mother is willing to camp out in a borrowed van for five nights with her breastfeeding newborn in order to ensure a slot for her older son in the “right” kindergarten. This chapter’s theme of intense social pressures in parenting and the competitive nature of raising children was relatable! When did this begin? I was a child of the 1970’s, a time when parents weren’t so stressed out about kindergarten. Years later, however, when it was time to enroll our daughter in preschool, my husband and I made sure it was one with prestige and academic rigor. Times have changed and somewhere along the line, priorities shifted. We are left to wonder if our children are really that much better off now, or have we as a society have just forgotten what truly matters?

Three Week Checkup explores the challenges of new motherhood. The protagonist of this chapter, Deena, finds herself feeling “undone by her exhaustion”, and receives minimal support from her husband. Breastfeeding is painful and difficult. She is feeling constantly watched and scrutinized. As Deena is grilled with questions at the pediatrician’s office, she struggles to provide “correct” answers and wonders if she is inadequate. Yes, babies are a blessing – but the struggles of new motherhood are real and often difficult to admit. There is so much shame and fear of being judged, which sometimes leads to an isolating experience.

Shapeshifting is a poignant collection of short stories that are authentic, powerful, and relatable. Each chapter stands on its own and tells its own story – addressing issues of bullies, pregnancy resulting from rape, parenting with an addiction or mental illness, spousal control and isolation, and legal issues around women and reproduction. Ross also explores the enormous weight of maternal guilt, and how easily we connect our child’s struggles to something we did or failed to do. Shapeshifting illustrates that all families struggle in some way, and all mothers are flawed. Parenting is not neat and tidy because people are messy and complicated. Ross takes us through the blood, sweat and tears of parenting; experiencing the most intense kind of love, but also anxiety and sleepless nights filled with raw emotion. Ross demonstrates how parenthood brings to the surface everything about ourselves that we might have preferred to keep buried. We work so hard to shield our children from our most shameful parts, but these problems still manage to fall right into their laps anyway. Well-written, intriguing, and emotional, Shapeshifting is a book that I highly recommend to all mothers. Bravo!

We were all going to be perfect mothers. That is, until we had kids.

“Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare:” – Ed Asner

To purchase your own copy of Shapeshifting, click here: Amazon. This is an affiliate link, which only means that when you click the link and purchase the book, I receive a tiny commission at no additional cost to you. Happy reading!

About the Author:

Michelle Ross is the author of three story collections, There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, winner of the 2016 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award and Finalist for the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Short Stories, Shapeshifting, winner of the Stillhouse Press Short Story Award (forthcoming in 2021), and They Kept Running, winner of the 2021 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (forthcoming in Spring 2022). Her fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, The Common, Epiphany, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, TriQuarterly, Witness, and other venues. Her fiction has been selected for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and the Wigleaf Top 50, among other anthologies. She is fiction editor of Atticus Review and was a consulting editor for the 2018 Best Small Fictions anthology. A native of Texas, she received her B.A. from Emory University and her M.F.A and M.A. from Indiana University. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband and son. michellenross.com