The mothers

the long version

"The Mothers are the women in Jim Mount's life: his adoring (and rejected) mother, Felicita (ironical name for her, "Happiness"), and the four women he loved and lived with: Louise is a sexually voracious painter; Maria, Mount's real beloved, a mini-skirted prole; Natasha, she of the prodigiously curly hair and deadpan attitude, a rich man's wife; and Francine, who is leaving as the novel begins, the ultimate cool, Cartesian, perfect woman in whose arms Mount thought he'd die."--BOOK JACKET.