Customer Reviews

Belong to Me: A Novel

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A refugee from intellectual city living, Cornelia Brown is the explorer of a new terrain: the burbs. She believes that her own wits and childhood environment have prepared her to live among the families who occupy its picturesque streets. However, as the book opens with her first cocktail party, Cornelia learns that settling in to her new life is not going to be as easy as she thinks; clearly, this is a foreshadowing of things to come. Her neighbor (the leader of the suburban pack) Piper quickly puts Cornelia in her place, although Cornelia is not sure just what that "place" is.

Thus begins the charming tale author Marisa de los Santos has presented in her second book, "Belong to Me." Thankfully, unlike many second novels from authors who have had a successful first book, readers can pick up and enjoy this book without knowing anything about de los Santos or the characters who inhabited her first novel. The joy from the beginning to the end of this story is complete unto itself, without history or explanation. De los Santos's strong characters and lyrical writing engage from the first pages and hold the reader's interest to the end.

Caught up in their own dramas, the women who inhabit the pages of "Belong to Me" are smart, tough, and sometimes catty. Their world encompasses the joys and pain of child-rearing, infidelity, and cancer, as well as the need to present a perfect image to the outside world. The glue that holds them together--as well as the story itself--is the human connection, the ability to reach out to a helping hand when things look most bleak.

This might sound like just another volume in the chick lit genre, but what de los Santos brings to her writing that takes this up a step is her beautiful phrasing. Pick up the book and open to any page. Somewhere therein, the reader will find some emotion or scene so beautifully described that it can only be placed in the realm of serious writers, of "literature."

This is really little surprise, given the author's vocation as poet, with a PhD in creative writing. All that study and writing practice by de los Santos has been carefully enfolded into a very compelling storyline in "Belong to Me." Without being distracted by her beautiful prose, she instead takes her (ok, largely female) audience on a lively journey that makes reading this book hard to put down, using her descriptions merely as enchantment along the way. She grounds her characters and stories in the foibles of daily life, never losing the central storyline despite her talent for turning a phrase.

In the end, "Belong to Me" is a great book because of its solid storytelling. It stands alone with its vulnerability and virtue, and it's likely that readers everywhere are going to be hearing a lot more about Marisa de los Santos.

Christine Zibas, Book Pleasures

When readers first meet Cornelia Brown, one of three protagonists in Marisa de los Santos's second novel, BELONG TO ME, it seems that her tale will be one of trading an exciting life in the big city for a quiet one in the suburbs. But what unfolds is much more complex and interesting.

Cornelia and her husband Teo have just moved from New York to a sleepy, upper-class Philadelphia suburb, and she's having a bit of trouble fitting in. She misses the pace, creativity and intellectual stimulation of the city and finds little in common with the other women, wives of professional men, she comes into contact with. She's particularly put off by her snotty neighbor, Piper Truitt. But when she meets the eccentric Lake, a single mom also new to town, she has hope that a solid friendship is developing.

Piper is a stereotypical affluent WASP ice princess. But, in de los Santos's able hands, she undergoes a radical yet mostly believable transformation. Piper and her husband Kyle are the alpha couple of the community. Piper is a mother of two, overly concerned with propriety and appearance. She is most at ease when caring for her kids and spending time with her best friend Elizabeth. When Elizabeth is diagnosed with cancer, Piper's world begins to crumble, but through the illness, she rebuilds it into one more genuine and compassionate. As all of her energy goes into caring for Elizabeth, she finds herself distanced from Kyle and her previous petty concerns and becoming close with Cornelia, the neighbor she once dismissed. Elizabeth's illness challenges Piper to change and to learn to accept not only other people but her true self as well.

Meanwhile, young Dev, a kind-hearted genius preoccupied with String Theory and poetry, is faced with his own set of challenges. Recently uprooted from his hometown after a disastrous seventh grade year, he finds himself at a new school in a new town and finally feeling happy and comfortable. Still, he wonders why his mother chose this location. Could it have something to do with the father he never knew? With the help of friends Aiden and Lyssa and first girlfriend Clare, he starts to put together the missing pieces of his life that, while exciting, unravels the carefully woven lies his mother has told him all along.

The stories of Cornelia, Piper and Dev intersect in a number of compelling ways, resulting in some good plot developments. Yet, overall, this is a character-driven novel, and it is the inner lives of the three main figures that make it such a page-turner. Cornelia's portions are written in first-person narration while those of Piper and Dev are told in third person. Her shift in perspectives is successful because the tone and pace remain consistent, and each character has a worthwhile and unique point of view. The secondary characters --- Elizabeth, Dev's friends, Teo and Cornelia's brother --- are all given just the right amount of attention, adding to and not distracting from the story.

Readers may be familiar with Cornelia, Clare and Teo from de los Santos's debut novel, LOVE WALKED IN, but BELONG TO ME stands on its own well. While the connections between some of the characters are a bit too contrived and the emotional transformations are sometimes a bit too neat, the writing is enjoyable enough and the themes of belonging, friendship and love challenged by secrets and change are universal enough to make this a recommendable title.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

Another current fiction bestseller that I picked up at the library in my attempt to keep up with what's hot in the bookstores at the moment. The author is new to me, as she may be to many, but she's a skilled writer. Unfortunately, her talent did not successfully trump the complete disinterest I had in the story and any of its characters.

The synopsis sounded good, certainly. From Amazon.com: Everyone has secrets. Some we keep to protect ourselves, others we keep to protect those we love. A devoted city dweller, Cornelia Brown surprised no one more than herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to leave urban life behind and head for an idyllic suburb. Though she knows she and her beloved husband, Teo, have made the right move, she approaches her new life with trepidation and struggles to forge friendships in her new home. Cornelia's mettle is quickly tested by judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt. Perfectly manicured, impeccably dressed, and possessing impossible standards, Piper is the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she would find in suburbia. A saving grace soon appears in the form of Lake, a warm yet elusive woman who is also a recent arrival in town. As their individual stories unfold, the women become entangled in a web of trust, betrayal, love, and loss that challenges them in ways they never imagined, and that ultimately teaches them what it means for one human being to belong to another.

Much of the story is told in first-person narrative by Cornelia, alternating with third-person views from Piper and Dev, Lake's 14-year old `gifted' son. Piper, ironically, was the only one I actually liked. I was turned off by both Cornelia's and Dev's overly-witty tones and attempts at sardonic humor. With every line, I felt as if the the author were really writing "Aren't you amazed by my incredibly clever dialogue? Aren't I fresh and smart and cutting edge?" It was just so overdone, so early on, that I couldn't get past the sheer phoniness of it.

I also disliked the story itself, and thought the ending really stank. How banal and syrupy can you get?

There were some great literary moments, though, almost always told during Piper's narrative (she should have stuck with Piper's `voice' the whole way through, in my opinion), when what you read and what you see in your mind's eye mesh with perfect clarity: "It seemed impossible that you could stand in a kitchen making hot chocolate and grilled-cheese sandwiches with your best friend dying in the next room, the voices of her children tangled up with the voices of your own, that you could butter bread and watch, through the window, the trees relinquishing their leaves and hear the silvery tumble of water into a kettle, and be suddenly aware that what resided at the heart of every shape and sound was peace. A rightness hovering above all that was wrong, shimmering, like heat rising from a street in summer."

I did try to like it. I SHOULD have liked it. It's likeable! Everyone else will probably love it. I would not be opposed to reading something else by this author, just out of sheer appreciation for her writing skill. If she could tone down the constructed cleverness a little and tell a completely different kind of story, I'd love it. We'll see what she does next.

The story was trite--calamity after calamity without delving into any one of them enough to grip the reader. Adding that weakness to a group of characters who are stereotypical (too wealthy, too naive, too ill) resulted in a storyline that was either predictable or easily forgettable. None of the main characters were developed well enough for the reader to care about what happened to them. Because the book dragged, or a good chunk of the book, I skimmed page after page. Like a soap opera, it didn't affect my being able to follow the plot. Spend your time on novels like The Help or The Other Side of the Bridge where there reader gets a real sense of participating in the time, place, and lives of characters through authors' rich descriptions.

Belong to Me is the sequel to the book, Love Walked In, which I read quite awhile ago.

This book is a continuation of Cornelia's journey with her husband, Teo, as they have just moved to a Philadelphia suburb. Cornelia has a hard time adjusting to her new neighbourhood and does not fit in well with the other wives there, in particular, Piper Truitt.

Piper is married to Kyle and they have two small children but a strained marriage. Piper constantly worries about outward appearances and presenting to the world the picture of a happy family. When her best friend, Elizabeth, begins the fight of her life against cancer, Piper rallies around her and her family and soon spends less and less time with her own husband. Piper begins to see the error of her ways regarding her own lifestyle and begins to realize that there are more important things in life than just looks and material possessions. Before she knows it, she has also started up a friendship with Cornelia.

Another family moves to town, a single mom, Lake and her very intelligent son, Dev. They soon become friends with Cornelia and Clare but we soon begin to realize that there is more to their story than meets the eye. Lake doesn't want to become too involved with these people and Dev starts to wonder why they're even living in this new area. Their lives quickly unravel with a simple phone call from an older woman. Dev finally puts the pieces together.

All of the characters stories end up coming together nicely and it was the interesting plot that kept me hooked. The writing itself is also captivating.

I'm a great lover of women bonding books. Two of my favorites over the years have been The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney and Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik. The description of Belong To Me brought to mind these two favorites so I was eager to get started with it. What I didn't realize, however, was that there was a prequel to this book, Love Walked In. Had I known that, I definitely would have read them in order and most assuredly would already have had a connection with the main character Cornelia Brown. It sounds to me that Love Walked In was a good book and introduced the reader not only to Cornelia but to her "almost" daughter Clare and to her "definitely" gorgeous husband Teo. There's a lot to be said for reading books in order and I think this is a perfect example.

When I started Belong to Me, I was sitting on a plane headed for Vegas. I immediately loved it and thought it was going to be right up there with my favorites. Somewhere along the way, I stopped loving it and can't really put my finger on the reason. It might be the disconnect between the two books and the author assuming that the reader already loves Cornelia and her family having previously read Love Walked In. She has Cornelia leaving her big city life and landing in suburbia which leads to all the women "clique" issues and the loneliness that can follow.

The surrounding characters just aren't that likeable. We have Piper, caring for her cancer stricken friend Elizabeth. She's great with Elizabeth but a bear to everyone else. Lake, who has just moved there with her teenage son Dev, whose life is chock full of mysteries. I can't really say a bond is formed between these women but they seem to be working towards it. Then the author went on an unpredictable tangent and began to lose me.

So the first 100 pages I was giving it five stars. By the end, it had dropped to 3.5 to 4. I'm going to be generous with my rating and round it out to a four because, had I read the prequel, I'm sure I would have felt differently about this book and I'd hate to fault the author for my obvious faux pas. A sure lesson to be learned here.....don't read out of order!!

I loved this book. It's a gorgeously written portrait of the extraordinary lives of women who might appear ordinary. You know these characters, you probably are one of these characters and by the time the book is over you will LOVE all of these characters even the ones that are deeply flawed. (Personally, while I enjoy Cornelia's voice, I fell hard for Piper. Oh and Dev, what I would give for my son to turn out like Dev. . .) Marisa de los Santos's skills as a poet are on full, rich display. Her senteces are sparkling gems of delight for the ear and the heart. Her plot moves effortlessly and swiftly and even as the story experiences true loss it is bouyed by new discoveries. If you ever wanted a smart, witty, deep and honest argument for the thriving life of the suburs, this is is.

I picked up this author's previous book, "Love Walked In", while browsing at a bookstore last year. I noticed that the author is a poet, a fact which almost caused me to put the book back on the shelf. I gave it a second look and was SO glad that I brought it home. I read a lot of women's fiction, as an escape from my busy life as an IT Director and mother. Most of the books in this genre are light, "chick lit" type fiction, so I rarely come across an author whose writing and stories draw me in as much as De Los Santos has. When this, her newest, book was released, I bought it immediately and in HARDBACK (... and I always wait for paperback releases).

I just finished the book and am again amazed by the writing. Her writing is poetic, and very visual, but certainly not flowery. It draws you in and makes you laugh and cry in turn. I'm a fast reader, and the writing certainly didn't slow me down, just made for a richer reading experience.

My only regret about discovering this author is that she hasn't written more - I'm going to have to wait ... years? ... for the next novel! I read about 7-8 new books each month, and Maria De Los Santos is now at the top of my list. If you like a well-written, funny, poignant story about families, parenting, and love, definitely order this novel.

(Spoilers alert)
This was the March selection for our local book club. We read Marisa de los Santos' "Love Walked In" last year. However, I did not immediately make the connection that "Belong To Me" is a sequel; I was probably 1/2 way through the book when a light bulb went off.

A good sequel continues the action/motivations of the first book, while telling a fresh story and further developing the characters; on those counts, "Belong to Me" is unsatisfying and weakly structured. The jacket blurb suggests that this is a story of a misfit in suburbia, and her nemesis, a "Ms. Perfect" named Piper Truitt...however that angle is tossed aside within a few pages. We learn little, even nothing, about the affluent Philadelphia suburb in which the characters live -- what makes it special or unique, or even safe, or prosperous. We are told that protagonist Cornelia feels a "sudden urge" to give up urban life and live in the 'burbs, but this is never explained nor do we learn the roots of her sudden conventional behavior.

"Belong To Me" ambitiously tries to tell several stories, and intertwine them. Cornelia and her handsome physician husband Teo are trying to have a baby, haunted by a miscarriage that occurred right on 9/11. Perfect housewife Piper is caring for a dying friend, a mission that disrupts her own marriage. Teen genius Dev is searching for his unknown father. There are several other minor threads, barely completed, about Cornelia's brother and the baby he is having with a reluctant girlfriend.

It takes a lot of skill to do this kind of book, and even more to avoid obvious cliches. "Belong To Me" veers on the edge of a cliff, then plunges into soap opera territory. Piper cares for her dying friend Elizabeth, but since we never had a chance to know them as close friends, we only get to see the sentimental treacly parts. Of course Elizabeth's death is horrifying -- but we can't care much about a woman we never get to know, who only exists in the novel to make us feel "sad". Piper herself seems to learn nothing; after driving her husband away because of her intense focus on her friend's situation, instead of finding herself divorced and alone in suburbia, she immediately falls in love with her dead friend's husband and moves in with him! Seriously, such "bounce back" relationships are typically doomed, and there is something creepy about appropriating a late friend's husband without so much as a couple month long waiting period.

Though set in the early 2000s, "Belong To Me" has an retro feel, with it's emphasis on the Peyton Place like goings-on of a small suburb, as if it existed outside of cities, culture, media. Piper, a woman of about 30 (and hence born in the early 70s) voices the idea that "there is no room in their suburb for a divorced woman" and then acts like divorce is strange or shocking -- this is bizarre, considering divorce is so common today and remarriage accepted completely, even in public figures. Piper and Cornelia are Generation Y-ers, who grew up in the 90s; it is not credible they feel this way.

I think the author has taken a easy way out by making majority of the characters very wealthy, so that contemporary issues about status, income, employment, even the astronomical costs of housing in a posh Philly suburb, are never even glancingly considered. Really fine writers, like the late Laurie Colwin, could take such material and make it breezy, witty and amusing. But De Los Santos, who prose is often richly poetic, takes it all with grim seriousness, as if a rich doctor's wife (with no discernible career, education or goals) is exactly as sympathetic as struggling single mom Lake, who has to work as a waitress to support Dex, the illegitimate son she conceived with Teo.

Speaking of that -- while there are a lot of unusual names in the world, a character whose actual name is "Devereaux Tremain" lacks credibility. That's a soap opera name, or perhaps a stage name for a Las Vegas performer. In fact, there are hardly any characters with ordinary American names: Cornelia, Teo, Piper, Lake, Devereaux. This gives the book an atmosphere of a romance novels, or the afore-mentioned soap opera, and that entirely derails any chance it has to make us look seriously at the death of a young mother from cancer.

Believe it or not, really moving human stories can be told about people who are not rich, not married to doctors, not living in multi-million dollar enclaves...about children who are not bona fide geniuses. And it is possible that the friends you make along the way will not turn out to be "SURPRISE!" the illegitimate (unknown!) children of your spouse. When serious novels by poets -- Marisa De Los Santos has genuine writing ability, when she steers away from cliches -- utilize the themes of soap operas and TV series, I want to shout "it's time for us to start turning off the TV" and for would-be authors to pay more attention to real human lives for inspiration.

In conclusion: I can't really recommend this book, even as a sequel to readers who enjoyed "Love Walked In". It is overlong, cliched and sudsy and worst of all, it is a boring and overly long read.

Cornelia Brown has done something she thought she'd never do: she's traded her native Philly and job at a café in favor of life in suburbia. Suburban life has never appealed to her, but it somehow seems the right thing to do, especially after losing twelve-year-old Clare (Love Walked In) to her mother, who now appears to have controlled her bipolar tendencies. Unable to have children of her own, Cornelia and her husband Teo decide to take things easy instead. In her new surroundings, she meets some rather interesting people, which include:

Her new neighbor, Piper. Piper is the proverbial suburban wife -- blonde, blue-eyed, poised and ever so slightly snobbish. She is also kind of a control freak (or at least she seemed that way to me), telling people what to do and how things should be done. She, her husband and her two children seem perfect. But there is a sore spot in Piper's life: her best friend Elizabeth is dying of cancer. She does everything in her power to convince Elizabeth and herself that something can be done. As long as there is life there's hope, right? Instead of trying to convince Elizabeth to get treatments that will get her nowhere, she decides to do something more profound for her friend -- she decides to listen, really listen to her.

Cornelia meets two other very interesting people: Lake and her son Dev. Dev is a thirteen-year-old genius. Boys his age are concerned about things like the latest pair of Nikes and the hottest video games. But Dev has other hobbies. He loves to ponder the concept of evolution and enjoys discussing his favorite sonnets. Cornelia -- a lover of literature and classic films -- feels she's met someone special in Dev. But then it becomes clear that Lake, a fascinating person herself, is avoiding her and hiding something. But will Lake be able to avoid Cornelia after Dev meets Clare?

There is more to this wonderful story, of course, but I don't want to get into too many details. I loved Love Walked In, so I was happy to get reacquainted with such memorable characters. The novel is just as beautifully written as the first one, and Cornelia's narrative is just as engaging. I'm a little confused as to why she's the only first-person narrator in the novel though, but the other POVs are well constructed as well, just not as fun as Cornelia's voice. I give Belong to Me four stars instead of five because, while I loved it, it simply wasn't as engaging to me as Love Walked In. However, I recommend it most highly. This could be a standalone novel, but I recommend reading Love Walked In first anyway. Marisa de los Santos is a new talent in literature and I will definitely read her future installments.