Customer Reviews

B-Mother

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3 star:		(1)
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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.

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!

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.

Hillary Birdsong, living in a desolate part of Maine in 1974, is pregnant and 16. The father, a summer lover with a Manhattan pedigree, sends her $500 for an abortion and a brush-off. But somehow Hillary just can't make an appointment at the clinic. Once her parents learn of her pregnancy, they refuse to help her raise the baby and send her to a home for unwed mothers, where Hill eventually must choose a prospective family to adopt her son.

Hillary's story unfolds in "B-mother," by Maureen O'Brien, who paints Hill's interior landscape as desolate as that of Maine in winter. After the adoption, Hill finishes high school and then college, but cannot seem to "move on," as her best girlfriend Shel, wants her to do. Hill feels the loss of her child the way an amputee can feel the empty space that used to occupy her pant-leg - she suffers the loss of her son palpably, obsesses about him constantly, floats in a do-nothing job without ambition.

B-mother is about the power unleashed like lightning by childbirth - the emotions stirred by seeing other people's babies, the longing for a normal life in a family that cannot return to normal. It is also about the steadfast love of Shel, herself an orphan, for her best friend. As Hill grows into a woman less loveable, Shel accommodates, changes strategy, decides to love Hill just as she is.

Anyone who has lost a loved one will be captivated by O'Brien's spare language and startling imagery. Anyone who has been blessed with the love and loyalty of friends who simply will not let you go will be touched by the grace of this story of a woman learning to love like a mother - both herself and the child she gave away.

O'Brien takes a volatile topic that might have been maudlin in other hands, producing a moving novel that portrays the truly treacherous emotional path of a young unwed mother forced to give up her child for adoption. Hillary's beloved older brother, killed in a fraternity hazing prank gone awry, has been dead for four years, her parents unable to discuss the tragedy of with their teenaged daughter, pushing her to the excesses of a world charged with grief and a lack of understanding. Soon enough, Hillary finds herself pregnant, with a boyfriend who hides behind the annihilation of drugs and whose parents cannot bear the thought of raising a child, especially her mother, the wound of their dead son an anchor they carry through their days: "She was holding death and it filled her; it blew her up wide."

It is 1981; young women are still sent to give birth in homes for unwed mothers, there to sign away the rights to their children soon after birth. Given literally no choice by her parents, it is in this place, surrounded by other confused young women that Hillary struggles with the enormity of her task. Her only proactive choice is to choose the adoptive parents of the baby and she does this with particularity, finally selecting Lola and James, Lola promising to send letters and pictures every year. Hillary also has the option of contacting the child when he reaches eighteen years of age. The birth, while difficult, fades compared to the excruciating sense of loss Hilary endures when relinquishing her baby boy: "I could not get warm without wrapping myself around my baby." Her life is never the same; although she finishes high school and attends college, the relationship with Hillary's parents is badly damaged, Hillary living only for the yearly pictures as her son grows from infant to young man.

Somehow she endures, but her life becomes about one thing only, in spite of the good intentions of others: Hillary is waiting for the endless years to pass until she can make contact with her son. Love, career, relationships- all fade from lack of interest. When her son reaches his maturity and a relationship is finally possible, Hillary faces a new set of challenges, bridging the long, lost years between mother and child and convincing her son she has always loved him. Avoiding the obvious pitfalls, the author steers her protagonist from victim hood to survival in a manner that is unerringly believable, poignant and fresh. The consequences of Hillary's rebellion are enormous, a lifetime, or so it seems, of living with loss until she can reunite with her son. Hillary intuitively realizes along the way that forgiveness is imperative for all concerned, including that of herself. An aching sense of loss becomes a paean to motherhood, whether the adoptive mother who must substitute for another or the b-mother, who has relinquished her most precious possession, her child. Luan Gaines/ 2007.

I finished this book about 24 hours after I started it. It's the most compulsively readable novel that I've encountered since the 3rd Harry Potter (weird comparison, I know).

This novel is so well done, it's completely moving and it flows beautifully. I'm no longer a teenager, I have no experience with the adoption system or hazing tragedies, I've never even been to Maine and yet every word of this book spoke to me on a seemingly personal level. I would recommend it to anyone.

B-Mother's strength is in it's simplicity. It's a great book and a great story. I will certainly be on the look-out for another Maureen O'Brien novel.

Not since The Bridges of Madison County have I stayed up all night with a book. B-mother was recommended to me by a librarian, and it's an amazing first novel. If Maureen O'Brien does not possess first-hand knowledge of the subject matter, she has the gifted writer's skill of allowing the reader to walk miles in the shoes of both the birth mother and adoptive mother with equal sympathy.

With support, Hillary probably could have raised her son. Her sensitivity and wisdom enabled her to choose the most suitable parents for her child in an open adoption environment. She existed solely for the yearly birthday letter and photo from Lola, celebrating milestones with poignant glimpses of the beautiful boy that was Tom. It seemed unrealistic to me that Hillary's obsession put her in a state of suspended animation for a full eighteen years until she was able to see Tom again.

The setting, coastal and inland Maine, is the bleakest, darkest, and coldest of places, a fitting backdrop for so serious a story. However, the author gives us the hope of spring with a soaring description of the joy a New Englander feels at the return of Canada geese in April - the same way a caring reader's heart will soar at the ending of this book.

This is an extremely powerful first novel by a young lady that is just older than the central character in the book. The story is one of harsh loss, very tough decisions, and of having to face adult problems at far too young an age without the support one would hope to find in a functional family.

The story is of a sixteen year old pregnant girl who finds herself cut off emotionally from her parents who have just lost their son. She must make decisions regarding the baby, her life, and her future. Like all of us, she survives. But like all of us, she is forever changed by what she has undergone.

Even better, perhaps, is the situation eighteen years later when she is again reunited with her son and his adoptive parents.

Although not a large book, this is a book of our time and a book that marks just the introduction of what promises to be a powerful new force in the literary future of our country. The subject could well have been done as a tear jerker, but it isn't. It is a story that is tender and caring, but which also shows a harsh reality.

Maureen O'Brien is a poet, and her first novel shows it. The language is live and evocative and makes her subject luminous. This book has heart. And mind. I knew her first as a poet, but now hope for more novels.

Maureen O'Brien is a talented author who draws you into the life of a birth mother within the first page. She has a colorful way of writing that pulls you into a story with well developed and complex characters. I felt as though Hillary was a real person and this could have been a memoir instead of a fictional story. Every aspect of this book was well researched and accurate. I would recommend this book to everyone!