The best books for mothers and daughters to read together

I grew up with a mother who loved me but did not understand me. Reading Amy Tan’s book, which is about a daughter’s journey to understand her own mother after an untimely, unexpected death, made me realize that the path to understanding each other goes both ways.

I first read this book in college, when I was 3,000 miles away from home, and I cried from the start to the perfect and extraordinary end. I’ve read it a dozen times since, including with my daughter, who just graduated from college. It may also inspire you to start your own Joy Luck Club or at least try your hand at Mah-Jong.

This is my favorite book. I literally buy every used copy I find at bookstores, library sales, and thrift stores just so I can give it away. The book opens with one of the most perfect lines in literature: “Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it’s smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.”

This is a story about a woman in her mid-forties trying to understand what it means to be good and coming to terms with the difference between good and happy. I fell in love with the protagonist, Reta Winters, whose oldest daughter has run away to sit on a street corner holding a sign that reads goodness. The story is about Reta’s efforts to get her daughter to come home, but it is also about what it means to be a good person, a good wife, and a good mother.

This is Carol Shield's final book, which she wrote as she was battling late-stage breast cancer. I love how easy this book is to read, but also how much it made me think about my own life and my own choices. Two fun bonus notes: each chapter is titled with a preposition, and Reta is writing a light-hearted romance book called (are you ready for this?) My Thyme is Up.

First of all, the audiobook is narrated by Meryl Streep. Yup. It is glorious. Second, this is my favorite of Ann Patchett’s books, and I love all of them. This is also a sneaky pandemic novel, meaning it takes place during that time when we were all required to be home, but the pandemic is not really the topic of the book.

I read this book and immediately gave it to my mother because it was the first book I’ve ever read that accurately depicted what it is like to be the mother of adult children (well, almost adults—in their twenties). The story unfolds as Lara’s three daughters return home to pick cherries in the family’s orchard.

For us literary nerds, there are tons of references to Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters, but for everyone, there is the mystery of what happened between Lara and a now-famous actor. It is a sweet, uplifting book that makes you feel good as you read it. I think of it as the kind of book that gives a reader’s high (you know, like a runner’s high, but no running required).

I was one of those women who was obsessed with Oprah’s Book Club. She started it in 1996, the same year I started my sophomore year of college. I can’t say that I read every book assigned to me in my classes, but I damn sure as hell read every book Oprah recommended.

White Oleander was picked in May 1999, just a few months before my wedding. I did zero wedding planning the week I read that book. I ignored my soon-to-be husband and called my sisters to demand that they read the book. The story, which follows Astrid (why did my parents name me such a terrible ugly name like Courtney when Astrid was right there?) as she navigates foster care following her mother’s conviction for murder, is compelling. However, I fell in love with the prose and the way Finch describes the people and places in the novel.

It is a lovely book that, if nothing else, taught me that I could kill someone with an oleander plant. I also appreciated the nuanced ending where Astrid has to choose between stability and her mother, Ingrid. It is like the ending of Age of Innocence where you want Archer Newland to get off the bench and go to Countess Olenska, but then you realize he psychologically can’t, and that is why this book, like Edith Wharton’s, has stayed with me all these years.

Finally. Finally(!) a post-apocalyptic book that is not depressing, and scary, and rage-inducing. This book is the literal opposite of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (I’m not knocking that book; it’s good, but this is better). I enjoyed Tea Obrecht’s first novel immensely and was thrilled to pick this up as an audiobook.

I was immediately charmed by the mother and daughter at the center of this novel and deeply invested in their journey in and around this strange version of New York City with its nesting cranes and underground pirate radio stations. This book made me hopeful about what might happen after the world as we know it ends, and that is a rare pleasure.