A daughter-mother relationship, between Marseille and Paris, from laughter to tears, like in an Almodovar movie! 

800 km: that is the distance that separates Clara from Véro, her mother, since she left Marseille to fulfill a brilliant career in Paris.

That weekend, for the first time, Clara visits her parents with someone. Raphaël is with her. Raphaël and his muted gestures, his natural elegance, his bourgeois pedigree. At his side, Clara smooths out the curves of her accent, ignores her emotions, and hides the photos of her mother in a leopard-print jacket and rhinestone skirt. But the illusion won’t last. In a few minutes, he’ll understand. He’ll see her. Véro.

A baby giraffe. That’s what Véro thinks when she sees Raphaël and immediately understands she’s not going to like him. With his disdain, his complicated words for no reason, and his mouth as tight as an oyster. Véro cannot grasp how her little girl could fall in love with that guy. Here’s the proof she was waiting for: she should never have let her go to Paris.

Throughout the novel, mother and daughter search for each other, flee, hurt each other without ever forgetting to love each other. How can one be a good mother when their child escapes ? How can one be a good daughter when ashamed of the one who gave us everything? How can we free ourselves without betraying ourselves?

La Bonne Mère is an ultra-contemporary social novel about class violence and the discomfort of those who will never quite belong to one world or the other. With a striking eye for detail and biting irony, Mathilda di Matteo immerses us in two worlds that reject each other. On one side, Marseille and its women who speak too loudly, wear bright colors and are always supposedly making excesses. On the other, Paris and its gray facades, its judgmental glances and its icy hypocrisy. By fleeing one, Clara thinks she can free herself from the brutality that marked her childhood—that of her father towards her mother. But this is an illusion. For the same violence unites these two worlds—that of fathers and lovers. Then, the inheritance must be broken. The chain must be broken. So that mother and daughter may finally reunite and find the strength to be free.