Writing about a novel I love, particularly one so well known and so well loved, is so hard I just sit on it for weeks. I’m not usually one for a story about family dysfunction but there’s so much more here. This is not a linear novel, but one that takes a whole lot of individuals, each beautifully portrayed and compelling and each with a story that matters. Elena Richardson moved home to Shaker Heights, Ohio with her journalism degree and her lawyer husband, works for the tiny local paper doing stories about the community of no deep import and has four children, the oldest son a star athlete, the oldest daughter a star student, the third child the nonconforming rebel and the invisible son who rides a bike in a place where everyone drives or rides.
Elena rents the second floor of her rental unit to Mia, an artist/waitress and Pearl, Mia’s 15 year old daughter who believes her mother’s promise that they will stay put this time. For years they have pulled up roots and moved to the next room in a house, furnished sublet, etc., but now they are supposedly putting down roots.
Mia makes friends with a woman who waitresses at a restaurant and is trying to regain custody of her baby she abandoned before the pre-adoptive parents finalize termination of her rights. Elena’s best friend is the adoptive mother who desperately wants to keep her Chinese baby.
A teenager is faced with the decision about having an abortion and disrupting her plans to go to a top school the next year.
What does it mean to be a mother – to parent a child – to do a good job to be deserving of the comment, “she is a good mother?” Elena obsesses about how to parent and is often a model mother in certain ways, yet she is so critical of Izzy and hard on her that she fails to take the time to understand her and connect with her. Elena thinks she knows how her children are, but we all know that our parents generally did not know how we were as teenagers. Not really.
Mia, despite the years of spending virtually all of her time with Pearl and no one else, always on the move, yet with a growing fan base for her art connects more with Izzy, a creative young woman than with Pearl who is looking for what it is like to be in a “real” family, the Richardson’s. The adoption conflict pits a Chinese woman who now manages to eke out a living after a very harsh period, who has found had won stability and wants her baby back against a wealthy couple that can give all material things the child might want but not an understanding of her heritage. The biological mother left her baby well dressed and protected from the elements because she did not have one bit of food for her. She did what was best for for the baby. Is she who is best to raise her? The teenager, like many with an unwanted pregnancy, thinks a bit nostalgically about what it would be like to have the baby with the boyfriend she adores. And in and out their stories go, each with a compelling and different reason for how they parent/don’t parent, how they interact with one another and how they perceive each other. Who is most generous? Who is most deserving? None of them and all of them in one way or another.
In the end, as the Richardson’s deal with the fact their home has been burned down, our loyalties are somewhat clear, but our compassion is with every single person. We at least understand those who behaved badly. What a remarkable, beautifully written story. I like too that while I did not want it to stop and I wanted to know more about what happened to some of the characters, the ending was satisfying. It was just and intensely wonderful experience to read this novel.
Since I listened to the audiobook, I’ll also comment that the narrator was wonderful.
They Called me Bookworm 