Hi Alex! I have a question for Death is The Doing — does Jude's relationship with her Mother ever grow better after her father's death? Or even before that? I find the concept of their family dynamic so interesting
DitD question!! :D
My answer -- Jude's relationship with her mother does get better. After her father dies, and she thinks back on her childhood as an adult, she realizes that he wasn't a very good husband at all, and he was only a good father to her (as opposed to her sister).
She realizes that she wouldn't want a friend of hers to date a man like her father, and it pretty much breaks her open because she idolized him, and what does that say about her?
Eventually, her younger sister Lucy reaches out to her and tentatively begins to reconnect her with Hannah, their mother. It's slow going, too. They both feel massive amounts of guilt- Jude because she vividly remembers just detesting her mother and saying horrible things to her as a child/teen, Hannah because she feels like she gave up on Jude too soon, and maybe if she'd kept trying to strong-arm a connection with her, things would be different.
By the time of the novel, Jude and Hannah are gingerly visiting each other for holidays and long weekends (since Hannah still lives in small-town Western Mass and Jude lives in Boston). They're both still very nervous about it, but things are improving, and Lucy is very pleased. They're essentially only just getting to know each other, despite the fact that Jude is twenty-four.
Also, Hannah doesn't know that Jude is a lesbian in the same way that Jude's dad knew, but she knows that she's always been "boyish" and, beyond that, it sort of only makes sense. Eventually, when Jude brings Maggie home, I think Hannah is still too excited that her daughter is speaking with her to be freaked out by her queerness, honestly, and when Jude confides in her that Maggie's family is mostly garbage (cue Armistead and Catharine Lord) and that she's never really experienced a (normal) mother's love, Hannah is like HOLD MY BEER-
