By: Celeste Ng
Plot: I don't even know how to condense the plot into a few sentences because there is just so much going on... but I'll try. About a "perfect" family living the good life in a great neighborhood until a single mother and her daughter come into their lives and burn ish down. I guess that works.
Thoughts: This book, like her first novel, is basically about family, and motherhood specifically. There is so much going on with all the characters that its almost like reading about a soup opera. Everyone is keeping secrets from everyone. But it doesn't feel all that dramatic, just life.
I kept wondering how the author felt, does she think Bebe should have the baby or the McCulloughs? One second you'd be reading about how hard Bebe had it and start to sympathize with her. Then the next page was all about how Mrs. McCullough lovingly cared for the baby as if she were her own. It went back and forth like that the whole time and you just realize that there is no one obvious answer. There really were no winners in this situation. The thing that tipped me to Bebe's favor, apart from the fact that she was her mother, was the total lack of sympathy from the McCulloughs. I understand that it is a heartbreaking situation, but how could you live the rest of your life adopting a child whose mother wants her back? That's why the ending didn't surprise me at all.
The author definitely knows how to write about terrible parents as I slowly liked Mrs. Richardson less and less. How you can treat one child so much worse than your other children is so weird to me. The creepy way she had to involve herself in Mia's past and basically chase them out of town. You just didn't realize how awful she was at first and the more you know her, the more you dislike her. I just wished poor Izzy would have stowed away in Mia's car.
My mother-in-law asked me if it had a happy ending and I didn't really know how to answer her! I said it's kind of open ended but really it's more that their lives are just going to continue on, and you don't know for sure how they will go. Everything wasn't wrapped up with a nice little bow, it was just like the end of a chapter, but there is no next chapter.
Favorite Quotes: "We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you."
"To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all at the same time. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she'd been and the child she'd become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again."
"Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less."
"One had followed the rules and one had not. But the problem with rules was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong, or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on."
Rating: 5/5 I really liked this book, especially the writing and the way the story is told.