B-Mother [Hardcover]

Maureen O'Brien (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2007

Hillary Birdsong’s idyllic New England childhood is brought to a sudden halt by the death of her beloved older brother. Brokenhearted and emotionally abandoned by her mother, Hillary consoles herself with city boy Miles, and at sixteen finds herself pregnant and a shame to her family. With few choices available to her—her parents won’t help her raise the child and the baby’s father doesn’t offer any support—she gives her baby boy up for adoption. Hillary endures the next eighteen years anticipating the day her natural-born son can legally contact her. 

 A touching portrait of a broken family, the effects of an adolescent’s life-altering decision, and survival after the ravages of devastating loss, B-Mother is an exquisitely realized drama featuring a cast of characters you won’t soon forget.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Among the recent spate of adoption memoirs, the voices of birth mothers have been woefully underrepresented. O'Brien covers the territory in her debut novel spanning nearly 20 years, beginning in 1980—less than a decade after the legalization of abortion and the advent of open adoptions. Hillary Birdsong, 16, has felt adrift since the death of her idealized older brother in a fraternity hazing ritual four years earlier. Emotionally neglected by her perpetually grieving mother, Hillary clings to glamorous party boy Miles, becoming pregnant during a summer fling when he vacations in her small Maine resort town. Unsupported by Miles and her parents, Hillary waits out her late pregnancy in a Catholic girls' home. Her son, Tom, is adopted, and Hillary spends the next 18 years putting her life back together while anticipating annual letters from Tom's adoptive mother and awaiting the day when she can legally interact with her son. Beyond some florid description and artificial dialogue, O'Brien's narrative does convey the long healing process after giving up a child for adoption. But the novel's long time span seems vague and undeveloped, making readers feel as if they, like Hillary, are just biding time until the mother and son's eventual reunion. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

Sixteen-year-old Hillary Birdsong has been at loose ends ever since her much-loved older brother died at college during a fraternity hazing ritual. Her distracted, grieving parents don't seem to have the energy to keep her in line, and she grows increasingly wild. When she meets a rich, charming New York City teen who is summering in her Maine hometown, she ends up pregnant. Within her insular community, there's no escaping the consequences of her impetuous love affair, and her parents send her away to a Catholic home for unwed mothers. All through her pregnancy, through the awkward conversations with prospective couples looking to adopt, she remains deeply ambivalent about whether to give up her child. But when she meets unconventional artist Lola and her caring husband, James, she decides to give them her son. It is a decision that will haunt her for the next 18 years. This first novel contains some awkward pacing and dialogue, but it vividly conveys the enormous cost of being forced to make such a painful decision at such a young age. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (February 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151013985
• ISBN-13: 978-0151013982
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,127,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Most bios will tell you where the writer lives, the town she was born in, where she has published. But we're from our memories and our desires: those are the real places in the landscape. I'm from the longing to protect, even though I can't: this is one of the themes woven through "the other cradling."


Wildlife Refuge

I want to be
your wildlife refuge,
where every part of you can build a nest,

where every bird inside you
can fly every morning
in safety,
I want to be your wildlife refuge, to be the land

you claim as home,
me, never mowed, you never hunted for pleasure or for meat.

I want to be the marsh,
where the white morning glory trumpets, the pink
morning glory trumpets, the goldenrod and the Queen Anne's lace,
I want to be the water-reeds, where tiny faces tucked into their wings
know how tranquility tastes.

I want to be the marsh, but the edges of the marsh too--
the razor-wire fence, the signs reading:
Keep Out, Warning, No Going Beyond This Point--
I want to give you big space for all the creatures inside you
that others find impossible to love:
stingers, toads, moles,
toady babies, spider eggs, all your blood-filled mosquitoes.

I want to be your wildlife refuge
where every bird inside you
can fly.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-crafted and emotionally powerful, February 19, 2007

By 

Lee R. Sachs - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: B-Mother (Hardcover)

Ms. O'Brien does a great job of putting us in the mind of the birth mother. The character of Hillary Birdsong is believable, likable and full of ambiguities and uncertainties that we can ID with. We follow her going through the struggle and realizations as she comes to terms with the gut-wrenching decision that defines her life.

It's also a very timely and relevant story with only passing references to the political and religious implications of adoption and abortion. Ms. O'Brien also has a fine command of language and description which thoroughly enrich the story. I **highly** recommend this book as a great read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story that grabbed me., January 18, 2007

By 

J. Hazelwood (Scarborough, Maine) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: B-Mother (Hardcover)

I could not wait to read Maureen O'Brien's novel b-mother each evening! It is emotional but not sappy. Wonderful characters, language and descriptions of Maine. Very insightful into the lives of birth mothers and adoptive families. Definitely one to read more than once!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Touching story that will leave you thinking about it, May 10, 2007

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: B-Mother (Hardcover)

This is the author's first novel and is an unusual story. A young girl, Hillary Birdsong, is dogged by childhood tragedy growing up in Maine. Her lovely childhood is ravished when her beloved older brother dies while applying to a fraternity. Her mother spirals into a deep depression, and leaves Hillary feeling abandoned. At 16, she is partying one summer with a rich boy from New York, and gets pregnant.

At a clinic with her best friend, Shell, she hears the baby's heartbeat, and decides not to abort it, hoping to keep the baby. Her parents crush her hopes, and eventually she is packed off to a Catholic agency, where she can select the adoptive parents. The birth of her son Tom, and their parting, is touching and wrenching.

Hillary he goes on to college, where her roommate needs an abortion, and later she drifts through life, avoiding her hometown, but staying not too far away. She works in an antique store, and meets a young man who is devoted to her. She receives annual letters from the adoptive parents, and deeply misses this son she never knew.

Will he contact her when he turns 18? Will Hillary's mother ever pull herself out of her life of pain, and reach out to Hillary? Will Miles, the baby's father, ever regret how badly he treated her and the baby?

Touching characters fill a sad life that held so much promise, and might yet...as Hillary learns to open up to life.

Armchair Interviews says: Strong story with a message of hope for Hillary and women like her.