Interview: Vanessa De Carvalho talks about The Mother Hood

Vanessa De Carvalho is a Canadian teacher and author who speaks four languages: Italian, Portuguese, English and French. She spent a decade teaching overseas in Germany, Italy, Vietnam and Tanzania. In 2021, Vanessa moved to beautiful Aotearoa, where she lives in Tauranga with her Kiwi husband and children. Vanessa talks to NZ Booklovers about her debut novel.

Tell us a little about your The Mother Hood.

The Mother Hood is a heartwarming story about motherhood and friendship. It explores what happens when motherhood isn’t what we expect. Saffi, Lena, and Violet turn to one another as they navigate early motherhood and all that it entails, but each woman is quietly unravelling. Violet has postnatal depression and struggles to connect with her newborn. Lena, a mother of one, longs for more children. Saffi finds achieving balance impossible. Will their friendship survive, or will the village they’ve built start to crumble?

What inspired you to write this book?

I set out to write The Mother Hood because as a mother, I hadn’t yet found myself in any fiction I had read. Literature around motherhood had, in my experience, mostly been something mentioned in passing.

If it was central to the plot, it was because the book was either a thriller, a drama, or a novel in which motherhood was a series of funny mishaps. I wanted to see a mother in a novel who wasn’t worried about her sick child or whose child had not been kidnapped. I wanted to see a mother who was simply doing life, doing day-by-day motherhood with the highs and lows of it; the doubt, the guilt, the love. I wanted to read about motherhood in its tiniest details—or motherhood in the mundane, as I came to think about it. I wanted to see mums just being mums and the drama of their ordinary lives.

What research was involved?

The Mother Hood was written as part of my thesis for my Master of Creative Writing through AUT. The question I aimed to answer was: “How might a contemporary literary fiction novel successfully explore diverse issues in modern-day motherhood, as informed by a critical examination of other fictional and nonfictional stories of motherhood in novels, anthologies, poetry and memoirs?” So basically, the research was reading a lot of books and topics related to motherhood. I read mostly fiction, but also a lot of memoirs, poetry, and essays. I also did a lot of research into some of the more difficult aspects of parenting such as postnatal depression and infertility.

What was your routine or process when writing this book?

It took me five years to write it, so it varied. I did a lot of writing at my favourite cafe in Tauranga (shoutout to Kindred Coffee in the CBD), but that was a bit harder once my youngest wasn’t a sleepy baby in the carrier anymore. After that, it was about trying to cram it into nap times and on weekends. But writing for me almost always includes a hot drink, mostly coffee, and often times music.

If a soundtrack were made to accompany this book, name a song or two you would include.

Saffi, who is not from Aotearoa, gets teased for being more Kiwi than Kiwis because she is absolutely obsessed with Six60, so there would definitely be some of their songs on the soundtrack. Possibly “Someone to be Around.” But I think that as millennial mums, there would also have to be a throwback to the 90s, something ultra girly and empowering. I can imagine Lena getting caught up in the moment and

letting go to “Stop” by the Spice Girls. I think most 90s girls still remember the moves to that.

If your book were made into a movie, who would you like to see playing the lead characters?

This was a difficult question to answer. If you read the novel, you’ll find that I’m not the most forthcoming with physical descriptions. If I wanted mothers to relate to these moments of motherhood, I wanted them to see themselves in them as well. I’m also not a Hollywood person, so I don’t really know the world of celebrities. That being said, I think someone like Nicola Coughlan or Hannah Einbinder would be

amazing. And maybe Ms. Rachel? She gives out Lena vibes, but I don’t know if she does that kind of acting. (I have a toddler in case it wasn’t obvious by my last pick.)

What did you enjoy the most about writing this novel?

Saffi, Violet and Lena really became close friends and I hadn’t experienced that in writing before. I find myself daydreaming about things that could happen to them. Saffi’s voice is probably the one I hear the loudest, even though she’s the least like me, and I loved that. It was so much fun seeing something happen and picture their reactions to it, like “That’s such a Lena thing to say!” or “Saffi would definitely do

xyz.”

What did you do to celebrate finishing this book?

When I finished the draft that I submitted for my MCW, I opened a little bottle of bubbles someone had given me when my daughter was born. She was about four months old, sleeping on my chest, it was just before Christmas and I was delighted and exhausted from the last two years (plus the realities of parenthood!) On the day of the book release, I’m looking forward to a nice dinner out with my family and

my mother-in-law and we might just open another bottle of celebratory bubbles.

What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?

My favourite books are the ones whose characters stay with me long after I’ve finished them. Out of the ones I’ve read so far this year, two have created characters I can’t stop thinking about: Hood’s Landing, by Laura Vincent and Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa.

What’s next on the agenda for you?

I think there’s more for Saffi, Violet, and Lena to say, so possibly a sequel. My husband and I have also been writing a young adult story for what seems like forever (since before the kids were born) and I promised him that would be my next project. So I guess by sharing that with you, it’ll force me to sit down and work on it now that part one of The Mother Hood is done.