With "Just Like Mother" Anne Heltzel Revives Pregnancy Horror Just On Time

With all the hits the women's human rights had to take the last couple of years worldwide it wouldn't be too far-fetched to say life is indeed imitating art in that we're about to embrace Margaret Atwood's handmaid dystopia in our everyday lives. In a most recent development, the restriction of one of these rights, the reproductive autonomy and control over one's own body, has justly caused a wild debate, fights and protests after the overturning of Roe v Wade by the SCOTUS.

Now, being very much aware of the insecurity and fears triggered by this development and its fatal consequences, I'm pretty certain it will have massive effects on horror literature - and it is a flabbergasting but on the point coincidence for Anne Heltzel's horror debut Just Like Mother to be published in these times.

The novel follows the story of a young woman, Maeve, who is raised in a cult, escapes and gets away, but who is again lured into its fangs by her cousin she grew up with. The sect in question is the “Mother Collective” which is a strange cult whose activities focus on the reproductive power of women and who aims at producing as many girls as possible completely dismissing men, using them to procreate only, and possibly killing them as unwanted byproducts like male chicks. The apparent value attributed to women is strictly restricted to their reproductive abilities and doesn't allow any deviation - not shying away from oppressive measures such as forced birth or physical and psychological torture.

After leaving her traumatic childhood behind Maeve is pretty sure that she doesn't want to have children despite constant societal pressure - and even those of us not in a cult know what that pressure is like. When she reconnects with her cousin Andrea, now the founder of a company that produces creepy AI-implanted puppet babies who are supposed to help prepare mothers-to-be for the motherhood experience, she is being pulled more and more into some sick, manipulative game. A game in which you never know who is involved. 

The build-up of Just Like Mother reminded me much of another (arguably) staple of feminist horror: Ira Levin's 1967 masterpiece Rosemary's Baby. Mother too builds up with a cult deluding and conning a woman to betray her, sexually take advantage of her and ultimately exploit her fertility. It is interesting, to put it mildly, to observe that a whopping 55 years lie between the two works, but the discussion is still going on. What Rosemary lacks, but Mother highlights fiercely, is the overtly feminist character of their respective plots. While Rosemary analyses the problem quite precisely, it leaves it at that and, as Noah Berlatsky suggests, doesn't bring any solution and finds its hell in the lack of feminist outlooks. Heltzel, on the other hand, weaves feminist approaches into her hell and raises further questions as to what feminism in fact is and how we do nothing but harm ourselves with outdated views of womanhood.

I personally super enjoyed the read - my favorite is a scene of birth which definitely borders on body horror and had me cringe hard. The story gets gradually more intense and disturbing, so much that it was like reading two different books, but in a good way.

The character development and main character Maeve's clueless descent into the web of lies and deceit has been getting some critique by reviewers, but hey, come on! No one would suspect such evil intentions, would they? If I could have it my way, I would have loved more creepy AI-dolls, but what are you gonna do...

I am predicting, dear horror fans, this is only the beginning of a big wave of reproduction horror. Let's just hope that in future it stays in fiction where it belongs, and not in our lives.