The Baby Merchant [Hardcover]

Kit Reed (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2006

The baby business is booming. Billions of dollars are spent each year on strollers, cribs, and clothing, not to mention assisted reproduction and adoption. With fertility rates dropping precipitously in the US and babies becoming ever more valuable as a combination of status symbol and perfect accessory, there's clearly a developing market for someone like Tom Starbird. Tom is The Baby Merchant
--though he'd never think of himself in such terms. In his mind, Tom creates perfect families by matching famous couples with prime--but neglected--newborns. Tom's a master of surveillance and secret "pickups". His small staff is extremely well-paid, especially the doctor who implants the government-required tracking chip into each infant's developing skull.

Sasha Egan is a talented artist feeling trapped by an accidental pregnancy. Determined to place her child with a loving family, Sasha is jolted by the arrival, at her chosen home for unwed mothers, of the unborn baby's father. Behind Gary's insincere protestations of love, Sasha detects the hand of her powerful, wealthy grandmother. Nearly nine months pregnant, Sasha disappears, going to ground at a seedy motel.

Jake Zorn is a crusading TV journalist who has broken some of the biggest scandals of the day. His life is perfect--except that he and his rainmaker attorney wife, Maury, cannot have children. They've tried everything; repeated miscarriages drove Maury to a terrible act that makes adoption agencies turn them away.

Tom Starbird is Jake's last chance, but it's too late--Tom wants out of the baby business. Jake Zorn knows more than a few hard truths about Tom Starbird, and he's not afraid to expose them to the nation.

Desperate to find a baby for the Zorns, Tom Starbird settles on Sasha Egan as the perfect supplier.

Soon Sasha's baby will be born. And many lives will be forever altered.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in an all-too-plausible future world with a falling birth rate, closed borders and lengthy adoption waiting lists, Reed's provocative SF novel explores the lengths desperate people will go to become parents. Jake Zorn and Maury Bayless, a childless couple in their 40s, approach Tom Starbird, a go-to man for high-end illicit "adoptions," but Jake, a newsman, isn't satisfied to just do business. If Starbird doesn't get them a baby, Jake threatens to not only ruin Starbird but also broadcast a shattering exposé about Starbird's mother, an unstable poet. Starbird, forced to agree, marks the baby of a pregnant artist, Sasha Egan, who lives in a home for unwed mothers. But Sasha flees the home and lays low, forcing Starbird to revise his plans. The inevitable clash among Sasha, Starbird and Jake forces each to rethink his or her motives. Reed (Thinner Than Thou) succeeds in making her nastier characters appear more misguided than evil, but the long sections from the protagonists' different points-of-view, all written in the same style, tend to blur together. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Kit Reed, author of Thinner Than Thou and other novels, has written an SF satire and psychological thriller that provokes larger questions about money, status, happiness, parenting, and even technology (newborns receive microchips in their heads). Instead of idealizing the parent-child relationship, Reed shows a refreshing array of emotions that asks what it really means to raise and care for another human being. The Robin Hood-esque character of Tom Starbird captivated all critics; when he disappears from the narrative, the story slows a bit. Overall, however, Baby Merchant is fast-paced thriller filled with interesting characterizations and situations that hit close to home. Just ignore the spoiler on the book flap.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765315505
• ISBN-13: 978-0765315502
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,515,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kit Reed's new short story collection, "What Wolves Know," just out from PS Publishing ( Spring 2011), includes stories originally published in venues ranging from Asimov's SF to the Kenyon Review and the Yale Review.

Called "a gripping dystopian thriller" in a starred review in Publishers Weekly, Kit Reed's novels, Enclave, The Baby Merchant and Thinner Than Thou a winner of the A.L.A. Alex Award, and her collection, Dogs of Truth, are available in trade paperback. The New York Times Book Review has this to say about her work: "Most of these stories shine with the incisive edginess of brilliant cartoons... they are less fantastic than visionary." Other novels include @​expectations, Captain Grownup, Fort Privilege, Catholic Girls, J. Eden and Little Sisters of the Apocalypse. As Kit Craig she is the author of Gone, Twice Burned and other psychological thrillers published here and in the UK. A Guggenheim fellow, she is the first American recipient of an international literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. She's had stories in, among others, The Yale Review, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Literature. Her books Weird Women, Wired Women and Little Sisters of the Apocalypse were finalists for the Tiptree Prize.

A member of the board of the Authors League Fund, she serves as Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars astounding, September 26, 2006

By 

Anthrophile (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Baby Merchant (Hardcover)

This woman never fails to amaze me. She is able to do speculative fiction with so much immediacy -- and hence, more suspence and menace -- creating worlds that contain classic science-fiction-y elements, and yet are so recognizably our own, for tales that are a veritable punch to the gut.

This book reminds me of all that was excellent about "The Children of Men" by P.D. James. In short: in a period in our not so distant future when a shortage of babies and a preponderance of fertility issues make children a rare commodity, Tom Starbird is the Baby Merchant, an indivudual who's taken it upon himself to remove infants from what he deems unsuitable environments with unfit mothers, and to place them, for a hefty fee, in loving homes where they'll be "wanted" -- according to his own judgment, at least. He's good at what he does -- the best -- but with his moral compass wavering and on the verge of quitting for good, he finds himself blackmailed into one last job, which turns out very -- catastrophically -- differently from what he expects.

The characters are vividly drawn and for the most part sympathetic, if imperfect, and the pacing is so rapid you can hardly put the thing down. I neglected work! Reed is skilled at capturing the inner life of both her protagonists and antagonists, through monologue and stream of consciousness (although her main villain remains a little flat) without ever being boring (a neat trick with stream of consciousness and not easy to do). I think this book has a somewhat stronger ending than the also excellent "Thinner Than Thou," mainly because the story itself is smaller -- about just a few people rather than an entire religious movement. It's more covincing, makes more sense, and provides more closure.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars REED PUTS THE REAL IN SURREAL, June 24, 2006

By 

Orph - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Baby Merchant (Hardcover)

Putting down a book by Kit Reed is a hard thing to do. Not just because it's good, which it is, but because it's like trying to put your conscience on mute before it's done asking you what on earth you think you're doing, and just who, exactly, do you think you are. That's just what Reed does here in The Baby Merchant. Some writers speak to their readers, asking provocative questions through symbolism and innuendo. Kit Reed reaches out from the page and pokes you. It's alarming, sometimes disquieting, but never inappropriate. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that the characters in The Baby Merchant, no matter how strange or unlikable or pathetic or morally-questionable, are always engaging, and sometimes a little too believable to be comfortable. Particularly the shockingly enigmatic merchant himself, Tom Starbird. Which is exactly what we need. We need a little discomfort. Asking hard questions isn't supposed to be comfortable. It's supposed to be necessary. All that being said however, the book is a blast. If you read Reed just for the fun of it, The Baby Merchant will not disappoint. It works on a strickly entertaining level, if that's all you're looking for. But like many of Reed's works, especially her latest few, you can admire what you see in the looking glass, or you can go through it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A guy I never thought I'd like, June 24, 2006

By 

Invisible Library - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Baby Merchant (Hardcover)

It's weird rooting for a guy you ought to hate because of what he does, but that's what I ended up doing with this book about a future so near that some of it is already happening. People I know are having a hard time having children and adoptions are getting harder and harder, they way they are in this book. The government is already clamping down on a lot of things and if we can microchip pets to keep them from being stolen, why not kids? Reed's sort-of hero Tom Starbird steals babies for sale to rich clients, but he has reasons. Then he steals a baby from the wrong girl and the real trouble starts. This starts a cat-and-mouse game that makes this novel a fast, really scary read.