The Catch A Novel: Book Club four

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The Catch A Novel: Book Club four

12/3/2025

Earlier in the semester, I asked you to consider how the novel plays with the idea of twinning or mothering. I allowed you to pick and most people picked “twinning,” so for our second to last post about the novel, I am asking you to return to this idea but, this time, I am asking you to focus on images of mothering and motherhood–how does a discussion of motherhood contribute to an understanding of the novel?

4 Comments

Alexandra O'Brien

12/6/2025 08:46:48 am

The first thing that comes to mind for me with this question is the “image” the two twins must have of their own mother: someone unreliable, a liar, a thief, someone who disappears and is selfish. And this image is burned into the backs of their brain; the fact that an unreliable woman like this raised them has made them both, in different ways, have instability in their own lives. These girls don’t seem to know who they are without their mother, or in other words, without their trauma. They try to piece it together, almost as if they feel it will make them whole. No wonder they want certain pieces to fit, like the woman or “their mother”, Serene. The fraud.

It shows how mothers —or parents, really— have such an impact on their children, and how the way we are raised leads us to look for our parents in other people—reaffirming our traumas and our first relationships. It shows how complex motherhood is – the way one mothers, the way one does not, the way children are impacted by it, it shows how connected everything is to motherhood. Good or bad, it is all linked together.

We take on what our parents leave us, even if they leave us nothing…. Sometimes they leave us with the thought that they were a writer, or the habit of liking toxic men… and we learn to unlearn those things. Or sometimes we take them on, like how Clara writes as her mother did. It’s really interesting, not to mention how connected it is to sisterhood. Watching the twins bond over catching this Serene has been a refreshing part of the book; it feels like they are finally facing their demons together and not hating each other for them as much.

I.S.

12/6/2025 02:58:26 pm

Thinking about the theme of motherhood to understand the novel demonstrates how much the presence and absence of a mother affects children. Dempsey, who never had much of a mother figure since she was only raised by Frederick, often repeats how “it feels good to be needed” regarding Serene (223) and “it feels important to be needed” (186) regarding Dr. Rayna. Dempsey seeks out mother figures and the feeling of being needed because her mother’s death and constant comparison to Clara made her feel like no one needed her her entire life. She’s been made to feel like a burden for merely existing and feeling needed alleviates that. However, it’s also putting her in bad situations, which unresolved trauma often does.

Although Clara doesn’t outright state as Dempsey does, I think she also wants to feel needed and it fuels her attachment to Serene (the imposter). Serene presents herself as someone who is very in need, and Clara is someone who has the means to fulfill her needs. They both feed into each other’s toxicity. Clara also has a strained relationship with her adoptive mother who emotionally neglected her, which is probably somewhat responsible for her BPD. She doesn’t know how to manage her emotions or cope with her trauma, resulting in her substance abuse issues and her tendency to use others to distract herself from her emotions. All of the issues in the twins’ lives have roots in their relationship to their mother(s).

Additionally, one interesting thing I noticed was how Serene (not the imposter) has supposedly directly influenced both Clara and Dempsey into making harmful decisions. For example, she told Clara to throw a rock at the boy in the wheelchair and then to sleep with her friend’s boyfriend. If I’m interpreting this correctly, it also appears as though she took control over Dempsey’s body during the situation with Frederick (248-249). I’m not entirely sure what to make of it yet, but I believe it has something to do with generational trauma or how parts of our mothers live on within us, even the negative parts.

Ashley Luise

12/7/2025 08:16:08 pm

I am fascinated by each twin’s similar reaction to their mother’s absence. Clara is the twin who appears to have gotten the better situation—she has two adoptive parents and is healthy and successful. However, her mother’s absence impacts her internally outside of her substance abuse issues, and this manifests in her becoming a mother figure of sorts to Dempsey and Serene by fulfilling their needs. However, she considers their needs only regarding aesthetics and grandeur, like how Claudette mothered her growing up. Clara is concerned enough with her sister’s looks to steal makeup products for Dempsey to use but is not concerned enough to make sure she gets home safe (198). To her, nurturing her twin involves ensuring she looks the part but is not about protecting her. Similarly, Clara is quick to “transfer two thousand pounds to [Serene’s] account” (204) and is too enamored with the idea of being able to take care of her presumed mother to recognize that Serene may be using or conning her. Clara’s relationships with her twin and Serene emphasize how she wants to run from, rather than heal, her unresolved trauma from her mother’s absence by putting all her effort into being the mother figure to everyone else. She does this in the only way she knows how to—by providing material goods—even if it means she may get burnt by her own mother. Though Clara’s method of coping with her trauma is flawed, it is partially understandable given that this way of mothering is all she has ever known.

Conversely, Dempsey, who was raised by an adoptive father and is generally perceived to be the weaker and more fragile of the twins, still relies on being needed by others to feel satisfied. Though Dempsey has become less reliant on influencers to tell her how to dress and apply makeup, indicating that she is beginning to recognize she cannot shape her identity through external influences, she still needs mother figures of sorts, like Dr. Rayna, to give her purpose. To Dempsey, “it feels important to be needed” (186) by Dr. Rayna, which seems to be generally how she copes with her mother’s absence. Dempsey has spent her life feeling unwanted and like a burden to everybody, so the thought of anyone—regardless of whether they are a good person or not—needing her is enticing. Serene needing her may be the reason why Dempsey is feeling “quite, quite at ease with her [so-called mother]” (222) and is beginning to believe that Clara’s theory is not as outlandish as she originally thought. The twins’ trauma from their mother’s absence seeps through each of their relationships, leaving them both with the instinct to provide—even in cases when another person is not worthy of being provided for. This tendency, particularly in the case of Serene, could be the very thing that destroys the twins and severely sets back their healing processes.

Anna

12/10/2025 11:32:12 am

When thinking about motherhood in The Catch, I think a lot about what the twins seek in the people around them as well as what they look for in each other. The most powerful scene to me regarding motherhood was when Serene was brushing Dempsey’s hair and Clara somewhat reverted back to a childhood state. Her language and tantrum-like behavior were reflective of her viewing the scenario as the little girl who was missing her mother. I also think that it was “Serene” manipulating Clara by preying on her desire for a mother, from the setup of the dinner to the way she spoke to the girls throughout their bickering. It was interesting as well to read about Clara’s conflict with Serene in the bathroom. Clara was so quickly upset by Serene’s actions, which signified her as being, in fact, not her mother, or at least not aware of it. When Clara’s fantasy was disrupted by this, she became violent towards Serene. This scene showed just how deeply Clara craved a mother, despite trying to keep up her façade of friendship towards Serene.
I find the difference between how the girls were raised to be interesting as well. Despite being in a dual-parent household, it almost seems like Clara feels the absence of her mother more than Dempsey. Maybe this is because Claudette was so strikingly un-motherly, or because Clara seems to be more similar to Serene herself. Dempsey is far more focused on her lack of sisterhood than her lack of motherhood, whereas Clara is so desperate for a mother that she is immediately willing to believe that “Serene” is her mother while Dempsey remained skeptical.

The Catch A Novel: Book Club four

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