Chosen: A Novel [Hardcover]

Chandra Hoffman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2010

In Chosen, a young caseworker becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of adoptive and birth parents, with devastating results.

It all begins with a fantasy: the caseworker in her "signing paperwork" charcoal suit standing alongside beaming parents cradling their adopted newborn, set against a fluorescent-lit delivery-room backdrop. It's this blissful picture that keeps Chloe Pinter, director of the Chosen Child's domestic-adoption program, happy while juggling the high demands of her boss and the incessant needs of both adoptive and biological parents.

But the very job that offers her refuge from her turbulent personal life and Portland's winter rains soon becomes a battleground involving three very different couples: the Novas, well-off college sweethearts who suffered fertility problems but are now expecting their own baby; the McAdoos, a wealthy husband and desperate wife for whom adoption is a last chance; and Jason and Penny, an impoverished couple who have nothing—except the baby everyone wants. When a child goes missing, dreams dissolve into nightmares, and everyone is forced to examine what he or she really wants and where it all went wrong.

Told from alternating points of view, Chosen reveals the desperate nature of desire across social backgrounds and how far people will go to get the one thing they think will be the answer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hoffman's middling debut explores the darker side of open adoption, as seen through the eyes of Chloe Pinter, a young social worker at a Portland, Ore., adoption agency. Juggling the insecurities of the wealthy and infertile Francie and John McAdoo with the increasingly strident demands of the contracted and impoverished birth parents, Penny and Jason, Chloe starts to question her own beliefs and motivations. When Chloe sees that Penny has bought a basinet, she warns the McAdoos that the adoption might not go through, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that eventually puts a newborn in danger's path. Hoffman seems to want the reader to understand the dilemma of birth parents confronted with the need to give up a child, but Penny and Jason and their family are too damaged and destructive to elicit any empathy, and the McAdoos, on the other end of the class spectrum, never fail to fall into stereotype. There is a whisper of a solid story about the way poverty, yearning, opportunity, and loss can play out, but with characters so weakly realized, it's tough to see this as anything more than a good-intentioned but inexpert exercise.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Chloe Pinter is in charge of domestic adoptions at Portland’s Chosen Child adoption agency. She advertises on adoption Web sites; interviews prospective birth mothers; arranges for their rent, food, and clothing for the last three months of their pregnancies; keeps files on all potential adoptive families; attends the births; and basically is on call 24 hours a day. She feels she is making a positive difference in the lives she touches, which makes up for her low salary. But suddenly things begin to disintegrate. One set of birth parents, Penny and Jason, try to extort adoptive parents John and Francie for more money, and demand that Chloe find Jason a job. Then John runs off with “a 19-year-old whore in Singapore,” and Francie starts divorce proceedings. Chloe begins to think that following her undependable but loyal surfer boyfriend to Hawaii may not be such a bad idea. Hoffman herself has worked in an orphanage and run an adoption program, and her sparkling debut fully engages the reader with Chloe’s altruistic dreams and the predicament in which she unexpectedly finds herself. --Deborah Donovan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (August 24, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061974293
• ISBN-13: 978-0061974298
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #990,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Since graduating from Cornell University, Chandra has been an orphanage relief worker in Romania, a horse trainer in the Caribbean, a short order cook in a third world hospital, the director of a US adoption program and an event planner for Philadelphia's Main Line elite.

She has lived in eleven international cities and this wanderlust shaped her writing--in each novel, the setting is its own character, flavoring the story. She prefers to write about everyday scenarios, shining a light on the complexities of situations through the voices of multiple characters. Her debut novel, Chosen, uses the domestic adoption scene of Portland, Oregon as a backdrop to pose the questions "What happens when you get what you thought you wanted?" and "How far would you go if it might not be what you want anymore?"

Chandra received her MFA from Antioch University in 2007. She is now settled back in her hometown outside of Philadelphia with her husband, three young children and an ever-changing menagerie.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Opportunity Missed (2.5 Stars), August 6, 2010

By 

Karie Hoskins "karieh" (Everett, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chosen: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I should be the perfect reader for this book. I've been up and down the infertility and adoption roller coasters. I spent five years of my life trying to "have our baby, cross the finish line, and be out of this psychotic parallel universe," as one of the main characters puts it.

And yet as much as I should have identified with the characters in "Chosen", after about the first third of the book, I began to actively dislike all of them except the adoption caseworker. The reader is allowed limited access to the thoughts of most of the main characters...birth parents, adoptive parents, etc. and through this, learns a bit too much. Either the author was a bit unsure of who her characters were or these people as a group are really off balance. The men, especially, go between being sensitive and emotional to violent and incredibly crude. (I am not easily shocked but there were several passages when the reader is in a male point of view that turned my stomach.) I don't think, given the genre, that this is what the author was trying for so I am surprised that those weren't edited out.

Again, I've been where these people are. I know the emotional roller coaster that hope, grief, joy and despair can create. I know how soul crushing the process can be. And yet I found myself nearing the end of the book hoping that none of them would end up as parents. A new father, whose life is unlike anything he expected, true, thinking, "Right now the baby feels like a money-gobbling parasite...Of course he knows it won't always be like this, that Wyeth will start to give back in some way, be more than a drain on their energy and finances." At another point, two of the main male characters imagine killing the women in their lives in horrific ways.

Another thing I couldn't figure out was why, after a baby goes missing, the reader doesn't get anything from the mother's point of view. She is shuffled to the sidelines and the reader is forced to guess as her feelings and emotions after losing the baby she's tried so long to have. The one person closest to the situation and the reader is cut off from her.

I've looked over this review a few times, unsure if it was one I should post. But this subject of wanting a child, trying desperately to have a child and the fragile feelings one has while on any side of the adoption triangle is close to my heart. I think the author had good intentions when writing "Chosen" - I think her goal was to show that no one involved in the process is all good or all bad - completely unselfish or totally greedy. I just feel like this was an opportunity missed.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating contemporary tale, August 26, 2010

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chosen: A Novel (Hardcover)

In Portland, Oregon, Chloe Pinter is a social worker and director of the Chosen Child's domestic adoption program. Her current clients, the recipients wealthy Francie and John McAdoo and the impoverished donor birth parents Penny and Jason, have different demands of Chloe especially when the social worker notices the bassinet in their home. She fears they will not come together in this open adoption.

Chloe warns the McAdoo couple not to count their chickens before they are hatched as the adoption may not occur. Her admonition leads to a series of missteps that places the baby in jeopardy and has Chloe reconsidering the merits of open adoptions that she thought were the best way to exchange a child.

Chosen is a fascinating contemporary tale that focuses on the economics behind adoptions; as the impoverished donor couple struggle to make ends meet while the affluent pair can afford the child. The couples are overly stereotyped as the poor family (including Jason's brother) are abusive and threatening while the wealthy pair is snooty nouveau riche. Ironically a third couple and Chloe are the sympathetic characters. Still in spite of the hyperbole of the exchange couples, Chandra Hoffman provides an interesting 360 degree look at how several people feel about adoption.

Harriet Klausner

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It feels like it is her fifth book, September 1, 2010

By 

Cheryl Koch (CO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chosen: A Novel (Hardcover)

Chloe Pinter is the director of Chosen Child's adoption program. Chloe loves her job, especially when she can put another file in her "Completed Adoptions" drawer. Chloe's latest couple awaiting a baby is Mr. and Mrs. McAdoos. They will be adopting a baby boy from Jason and Penny. Jason and Penny are a young couple that are desperate for money.

Then there are the Novas. They have been trying desperately to get pregnant. They finally have. When a baby is stolen, everyone including Chloe start thinking about what is really important in life.

If you are adopted you have probably wondered at a time of two in your life...What would have happened if I hadn't been adopted...Who were my birth parents like...Why did they give me up?

Chosen by Chandra Hoffman is fictional but it is based on real experiences Mrs. Hoffman had. It was amazing that Chosen is Mrs. Hoffman's debit novel. It feels like it is her fifth book. I was very impressed with this book. It had great depth, a strong storyline and good characters. I got to experience the adoption process from every angle...the people giving up the baby to the ones adopting the baby. In addition, to the ones that have been trying to have a baby of their own. This book will make you appreciate the family you have...whether it be, born into it or adopted like I was. My parents are great and I am lucky to have them. The only issue I had with this book was that I wished that Chloe had been a bit more assertive.