Customer Reviews

Daughter's Keeper

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The main character of this novel, Olivia Goodman, is an outspoken young woman who drops out of college to travel to Mexico. While there, she meets Jorge, a charismatic young man with whom she has a brief affair. Olivia returns to the US, and to her surprise, Jorge soon turns up on her doorstep as an illegal alien. Their life becomes a dreary routine of Olivia supporting them through her waitressing job while Jorge attempts--mostly unsuccessfully--to find work. Jorge's desperation to become the breadwinner leads to his tangential involvement in a drug deal; unfortunately, his poor judgment results in not only his own arrest but Olivia's as well.

What follows is an interesting insider's view of America's legal system, particularly the "mandatory minimum" sentences which can result in lengthy jail sentences for innocent bystanders like Olivia. However, the novel also contains a series of engaging character studies, as the story is told from various perspectives. Olivia herself is confronted with the necessity of taking responsibility for actions in light of both her possible jail time and her impending pregnancy. Her mother, Elaine, is torn between her disapproval of Olivia and her desire to help her child; Elaine must face the lack of maternal instinct which has clouded her entire relationship with her daughter. Olivia's public defender, Izaya, is a jaded but brilliant attorney who is spurred on by Olivia's innocence as well as his growing feelings for her. Finally, lesser characters such as Jorge and Arthur, Elaine's boyfriend, also impact the storyline with their unique viewpoints.

I found myself caught up in Olivia's story, silently rooting for her as she faced trial. Although both Olivia and Elaine were not always likeable characters, it was easy to sympathize with them and the unfairness of Olivia's predicament. At the end of the novel, Olivia and Elaine each emerge as very different people; while this was not entirely believable, it made for an appealing and enjoyable read. Overall, I felt that this was a promising novel from an author who I would definitely read again.

I read this book through to the end and tend to agree with almost all of the previous reviews. The story (the plot) is interesting and compelling and kept me going. The author did make her point about the DEA and the federal sentencing guidelines and how the federal system eats the innocent and the amateurs, while the hard-core professional criminals are rewarded for ratting out others. I am a lawyer and this is not my field of work, but I did know a little bit about the subject. I say this because even I was horrified at the results obtained in the case the author described and I'm sure it is accurate. I think the book is worth reading just to open people's eyes. That said, the author's writing technique is not very good, use of m--dashes on every other page to break up runon sentences drove me crazy, as well as all the other things reviewers mentioned. I also felt that her characters were not well thought out or believable, particularly Elaine. If you're going to deliever such an important message, take the time to do it well,

Ayelet Waldman, in a startling departure from her Mommy-Track Mysteries, has written a serious novel called "Daughter's Keeper". It is about a middle-aged woman named Elaine Goodman who owns her own pharmacy, lives with a man she loves, and is contentedly looking forward to a restful retirement.

Elaine's happiness would be complete were it not for her contentious daughter, Olivia. Olivia is a college dropout and a political activist. She was jailed briefly on several occasions for participating in various protests, and she works as a waitress to support herself and her boyfriend, Jorge, an illegal immigrant. Olivia never knew her father, and her relationship with her mother has always been thorny.

This uneasy mother-daughter relationship is tested when Olivia faces a series of legal and personal crises that threaten to destroy her future. Suddenly, Elaine must make some tough decisions. Should she concentrate on keeping her own life on track, or should she sacrifice her plans to help Olivia?

Waldman slowly and deliberately sets up her story and she fleshes out her characters carefully. We get to know Elaine as a person who has suffered and struggled to get where she is, and who admits that mothering Olivia has never been easy for her. Olivia is a caring and compassionate individual who is too brash, naive, and impulsive for her own good. A particularly fascinating character in this novel is Izaya Feingold-Upchurch, a passionate defense attorney who helps Olivia when she gets into serious legal trouble.

Waldman explores many themes in "Daughter's Keeper". How much do we owe our children, especially when they reach their twenties and act irresponsibly? What is the statute of limitations for parents when it comes to rescuing their adult children? While telling the story of Elaine and Olivia Goodman, Waldman also discusses the legal and social ramifications of the often unfair and draconian federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws. This part of the book is both instructive and extremely disturbing.

"Daughter's Keeper" is a beautifully written and heartrending account of one family's wrenching journey towards understanding and reconciliation. Although it is a sad journey, it is one well worth taking.

The subject of this book is very important and told with a social conscience, but oh goodness, Ms. Waldman writes fiction like a ballerina wearing a scuba suit. I don't know whether to applaud her social conscience or ream her for what she's done to the minimum standards generally accepted in the world of fiction. A recomended read, if you promise not to think this is an example of wonderful prose or ignore the fact that she probably had a little advantage getting started. In time, her style may improve. Her heart is already there.

This book is the story of a young woman who battles America's drug laws. 22 year old Olivia Goodman is in a bind when her boyfriend, illegal Mexican immigrant Jorge, is persuaded to participate in a drug deal, and Olivia's vague complicity sweeps her into an intense legal battle when she is arrested with Jorge. Her mother, Elaine, has choose between helping her daughter and pleasing her fiance.

I really liked this book a lot because of the way it explores the relationship between Olivia and her mother - it starts off with clashes and discomfort, and develops and changes throughout her experience and actually had me in tears by the end.

I also liked the author who has a lot of knowledge about the legal system and the drug laws in question. It taught me a lot about these laws that I'd never considered before. I always like books where I learn interesting things! A fast moving story to the end.

I speak for not just myself, but my entire book group when i say that this book was pleasurable and intriguing. First off, the story plot wasn't a rehashing of the same old story. Obviously Mrs. Waldman's through understanding of the legal system, and it appears, this matter of trug trafficing in particular, lent a emotional aspect to a subject I often find very dry. Couple that with the unusual, or I take that back, not unusual (as most women I know have strained realtionships with their mothers!) but rather often unspoken mother-daughter relationship's trials and tribulations. The two women struggling to forgive each other and themselves was at times hard to read but nonetheless honest.I look forward to reading more of her work.

I was quite surprised at some of the negative reviews of Daughter's Keeper. I thought it was quite an intelligent, well-written and thought provoking story. Waldman writes with a genuine passion and intensity that resonates throughout the work, and her attitudes towards the criminal justice system are weaved quite effortlessly into the narrative. Even though the story does have a tendency to drift into clichéd melodrama, Waldman still does a terrific job at presenting the human costs of the federal incarceration laws. Daughter's Keeper works on a number of different levels: As a portrait of a family in crisis; a mother-daughter love story; an indictment of the criminal justice system, and as an intuitive study of motherhood and what it means to be a mother.

When the independently minded and headstrong Olivia is arrested under suspicion of dealing in methamphetamines with her Mexican boyfriend Jorge, she is catapulted into a nightmarish scenario - where both Olivia and her self-sufficient mother Elaine, are forced to confront head-on the government's war on drugs. As Olivia faces criminal prosecution, Elaine must come to terms with her own hidden regrets and grasp the opportunity for a second chance with her daughter.

Waldman manages to weave astute characterization, with a perceptive use of drama to produce a story that shows not only the inequities of a judicial system that sees only in black and white, but also those strong bonds between mother and daughter. She has a nice easy, relaxed style that pleasantly balances natural conversation, and the interior description of the characters' inner lives, with a solid dramatic tension. Daughter's Keeper will teach you a lot about mandatory minimum sentences and also make you question whether the federal government is really winning the war on drugs. This is a good "message" book.

Michael

This novel is a less than mediocre reheating of TV movie cliches and self-important "hard truths" bound by awkward and boring writing. It reads like the hundreds of novels that pile the slush pile in many publishing houses, actually much worse than many of them. I know because I work at one of those houses and read those manuscripts, most of which, while they will never be published or receive any attention, are far better than this drivel. Why is this in print then? The explanation is quite simple. Ms.Waldman is the wife of best-selling author Michael Chabon, hence the embarrasing boychoir of ludicrously inflated phoney blurbs by author-friends and other members of the "set". What really makes me sick, specially since I see these things happening all the time while writers of merit will never get a break for publication, is the artificial celebration of "novels" such as this. In the past year I've read at least forty manuscripts that are much better than this that I know have zero chance for publication. Yet, there it is. With oily quotes from Mr.Eggers and others members of that tribe of snobby, souless "literary yuppies" whose talents are in shameless self-promotion and mutual hype, and that are fastly becoming the parasites of american letters. No wonder less and less people buy novels anymore. Stuff like Waldman's is what I call a reader-killer. It just makes you want to throw the book away and do something else, watch a movie or go for a walk. You read two books like this is a row and then you spend months without feeling the need to read fiction again. Any mid-level Tv drama will give you the same stuff a thousand times better crafted. At least it will be a professional job. We are losing readers everyday, and this is one of the causes: worse than mediocre stuff hyped and promoted as "literature". This book is the worst kind of trash not just because of its blatant mediocrity, but because because of products like this clogging the bookshelves at your local B&N and wasting space in the literary reviews, many worthy voices will never get a chance.

While the concepts in this novel are admirable and even inspiring, I have to agree with the readers who have negative things to say about the mechanics of the writing. The lack of attention to basic principles of fiction is likely to make many readers cringe, as I did. It reads in many places as though it simply wasn't edited.

Contrary to what a couple of readers have suggested, I understand Ms. Waldman did endure numerous rejections of this manuscript. I am however surprised that her publisher didn't insist on some more work before arranging for it to be printed. There are indeed many well written books out there (including unpublished ones) and there's not much point in spending your time with a writer who hasn't taken her readers seriously enough to learn the craft before marketing her work.

This is a great, fast-paced read from the author of the Mommy Track mysteries. She tackles more serious subject matter this time, but never loses her wit and sense of humor. There's a valid social message here, but Ayelet doesn't shove it down our throats or beat us about the heads with it; the characters are multidimensional and very much alive, and the prickly intimacy of the relationship between a middle-aged mother and her grown daughter is captured very aptly. Ayelet delivers the legal maneuverings and courtroom tension you might find in a John Grisham novel with the intelligence, wit and warmth of the Ivy League educated attorney and mother that she is. It makes for a great combination and a very satisfying read.