Customer Reviews

The Baby Merchant

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

If you read the capsule review by Harlan Ellison on the back of this book, you will be expecting a work of fiction right up there with the top classics of all time, and I've heard many other words of high praise for this novel. I was then quite disappointed by this average book.

The basic story---it's the fairly near future, a future that is almost identical to our own (I had to keep remembering this was supposed to BE the future) but one in which fertility rates have dropped quite a bit (but still, there are homes for unwed teens and families with lots of kids, so even that is a bit murky) and where babies are a very hot commodity. Tom Starbird can get babies for people, for a high price. He is thinking of getting out of the business, but takes on one last job through what is essentially blackmail. He makes the mistake of getting a bit involved with the "supplier" of the baby, and that creates a moral question for him.

We are following 3 stories here, Starbird's, that of an unwed mother and that of a childless high powered couple. I don't find any of the characters to be fully drawn. They all seem to act within parameters that are set up very early in the book, and I never felt surprised by a thing I read here. I also found their motives often to be hazy. A key point of the plot is Starbird doing things he doesn't want to do to protect his mother, who we see from the start he has no real love for, and what is threatened to be revealed really doesn't seem shocking enough for him to do all he does.

I kept reading because the writer is competent and I wanted to see things resolved, more just in vain hope I'd be surprised somehow, which I wasn't.

Maybe what is strange here is that there's just a little touch of SciFi or alternative future here, but a tiny touch of it, along with a quite pedestrian story. It's an odd combination and I do wonder just what those who rave about this novel are thinking.