Customer Reviews

Leave It to Me

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

How this book got published is a mystery to me. This has got to be without a doubt the worst novel I have ever read. There are no redeeming qualities here. The story line is ridiculous. The coincidences are too much to bear. Debby, who is adopted by an Italian couple as a toddler, never develops much love for them, even though they are decent, loving people. She saves her love and sick fascination for her birth parents, a Fresno woman who went to India in the 60's looking for a guru, and the guru himself, a serial killer currently in prison. She wants to meet them and then do some sort of damage to them, as payback (for what? She was better off growing up in Schenedctady). Debby graduates from college and manages to become the lover of a filthy rich ex-Jackie Chan of sorts. He doesn't give her the respect she "deserves" so she torches his apartment. Then she escapes to California, in search for bio-parents. While in the Haight-Ashbury, she manages to charm a film producer who happens to know her bio-mom. Debby is the luckiest person on earth!!! There are 30 million souls in CA and she happens to bang the guy who is banging her mom. Debby (now named Devi) will not know this until later in the story, when the private eye she has hired reveals the whole mystery, and soon disappears, and at this point I had had enough of this poor excuse for a novel and threw it across the room. The only thing that really piqued my interest is the reference to Ashrams in blue collar Napa. Wow. Other than that, this was a waste of pulp.

Bought it cheap from a bargain book table, read it fast and regretted almost every minute. If you like language for its own sake, you might like this novel because there are some awfully pretty and interesting turns of phrase. But if you actually read because you like reading an interesting, well-told story about characters that at some level seem human, skip this book. It's worse than a violent pulp novel, because at least those types of books make you work to reach the end of your bad story. Reading this felt like hard labor, and I'm not even sure how it ended after reading the ending twice.

I would give this a big old zero, if I could.
The writing is not even up to the level of supermarket pulp novels. The main character is an utterly unsympathetic self-described "waif" who isn't even particularly interesting. I can't make myself care how many men she slept with, much less why her tastes run from movie producers to shell-shocked Vietnam vets. No motivation is ever given for Devi's tendencies toward shoplifting, promiscuity, or murderousness (which in itself is apparently intended as pop-psychology shorthand for self-destructiveness) except that she is the abandoned daughter of an American hippie and an Asian pseudo-cult leader, and at one point she states that she believes in nature over nurture. Maybe she's just a horrifyingly immature brat. In chorus with Mukherjee, Devi drags us on her bad trip that promised an intriguing premise, but quickly turned into an exercise in unintelligent absurdity. If this book really was a work of pulp rather than a novel with pretensions to mythological allegory, it would probably be a lot more fun.
I didn't pay a dime for this book, just pulled it out of a box of throwaways from a friend who was moving, and I can see why it was destined for the garbage pile.

I think one of the main problems with this book might be Debbie/Devi herself. She is simply not likeable. She is smug, smarmy, ungrateful, self-absorbed, and luckier than she ever seems to comprehend. Aside from a few moments here and there, I had trouble feeling any real sympathy for her. I could not understand most of her motivations. Just like I could not understand this novel's plot. Mukherjee sets up all the players brilliantly...then lets them crash into each other haphazardly, leaving the reader confused and unsatisfied. The true climax of the book should be when Devi finally confronts her birth parents, but when that scene finally occurs everything just dissolves into a nonsensical bloodbath that doesn't particularly resolve anything. The only thing that keeps this book from being a waste of paper is the fascinating prose. I didn't like Devi, but I loved hearing her talk. Her voice is unique and distinctive, hip and dark and poetic. Even when she isn't making any sense, her strange little riffs on revenge and adoption and forces of nature are a pleasure to read.

That probably isn't fair. I'm sure Mukherjee did indeed have a point to her novel. I consider her one of the greatest writers alive today, but, after the novel smacked me in the face, it kept sailing right on over my head. Something to do with genes, karma, gods of destruction and indirectly murderous young women who flank directly murderous men? unfortunately, motives which might have clued me in to meaning were missing from the story. It all began beautifully, but seemed to mutate into a pulp horror novel for hipsters. I was disappointed, yet occasionally enlightened and generally entertained.

This book might not be for everyone (especially those who are close minded with no imagination or belief that anything is possible); however, I enjoyed reading it. Having read other books by Mukherjee (Jasmine and Holder of the World) this one continues to demonstrate Mukherjee's underlying theme, do what ever it takes to follow your dreams. The plot may seem unrealistic or the ending disappointing (to those who lack the belief in the power one has within them self to accomplish anything in life), but I found it inspiring.

Bharati Mukherjee attempts to tell a meaningful story about identity, loss, and betrayal. This should be light work for her since she has tackled these issues in previously well-received works. How she can mangle these same ideas beyond recognition in this publication is a deep, deep mystery. As a matter of fact, wondering how this book even got published is a more interesting intellectual challenge than actually reading the book. Mukherjee takes a deeply-layered theme, intercultural adoption and American identity, and instead of underscoring it with sublety and poignancy, hacks it to death with cliches, a ridiculous plot that verges on camp, and a failed stylistic attempt at writing the novel as if it were one grand pensee; the metaphorical metaphor, if you know what I mean. The problem is nobody knows what Mukherjee means and it's difficult not to be disappointed, even down right angry with this book.

In the novel, Debby DiMartino is a half white, half "Asian national" adopted by an Italian couple in Schenectady. Sit down for this folks: her birth father is a homicidal maniac rotting in an Indian prison and her birth mother is a San Francisco flower child who helped him murder 17 people in a frenzy of human sacrifice, drugs, and naked dancing. The pair tried to kill their child, Debby, as a toddler. Left for dead, she is rescued by the Gray Nuns and subsequently adopted in America. Years later, the blissfully ignorant and blissfully boring Debby burns down an ex-lover's mansion and kills a woman in the process. She flees New York and heads for San Francisco in search of her birth parents. Even though she's living out of her car, Debby (now Devi) manages to date a rich movie producer who helps her find her birth mother. As it turns out, Mr. Movie Producer knows her birth mother and the plot weakens from there.

Let's not go on. Let's simply look at the foibles already garishly displayed in this unrealistic story. First of all, the cliches, the random violence, and the over-sexed protagonist scream made for t.v. movie success. (If I were Mukherjee's agent I'd be begging her to sell to a network.) Most of the adoptee's I know have really interesting stories, but they are interesting in a quiet, contemplative, non-violent way. Given that, this plot is an insult to everyone in the adoption triad. Birth parents are not maniacal killers who attempt to murder their children and only put them up for adoption as an afterthought. Adoptees most certainly do not act upon homicidal urges they do not know they have inherited. On the whole, the notion that homicidal tendencies are inheritable is cast in much doubt. Despite this, adoption seems to be the exception to the scientific rule. References about how adoption makes people crazy, I mean psychopathic, abound. (I'm reminded of Kramer's bon mots on the sitcom "Seinfeld" regarding the Son of Sam murders that adoption obviously leads to serial killing.) This is the kind of attention the adoption community certainly doesn't need. And these are the sorts of wild, far-fetched stories that are eclipsing plain old adopted folks' need to search and right to know.

Mukherjee's portrayal of Devi qua adoptee is shallow and predictable. For example, we are subjected to the obligatory adoptee-identifying-with-the-dog-at-the-pound scene where Devi sadly remarks, "Poor mutt. It was bread like me, with crossed signals and conflicting impulses." Oh, come on. Could we please, please move beyond portrayals of adoptees that absolutely drip with treacle and pathos? Didn't Mukherjee ever learn the first rule of creative writing: don't point out the obvious? Obviously not.

Finally, I remark on a quote that is the best of the worst. Poor Devi, reflecting on her abandonment says, "I felt sad for the baby girl the Gray Nuns'd brought to visit the prisoner. I felt sad for all the dumped and discarded. I heard the cypresses wail." When I read this I had no choice other than to break into peals of hysterical laughter. This is truly the coup de grace. What exactly (someone please tell me) is a WAILING CYPRESS and how in the world does it come to symbolize adoption? It's this kind of linguistic laziness used to describe adoption and tendency to think of it in oh-so-metaphysical and otherworldy and sappy terms that are a bore, a disservice, and a discredit. One of the obstacles to real adoption reform is that most people form opinions based on an idealized notion of adoption: publishing novels describing adoption as "wailing cypresses" does more harm than good.

Do not buy this book. It is poorly written, the plot is stupid, the characterization is weak and anyone in the adoption triad is bound to be insulted somewhere along the way. If you're not in the triad you'll be sorely misinformed for your efforts and not entertained at all! I have a great suggestion: use the money you save on the book and take an adoptee to lunch. His or her reunion story, I promise you, will be fascinating.

Sometimes I think people write to exorcise personal demons. This is one of those times, and I was not sorry when, like at the end of an overblown grand opera, all the main characters died. Catharsis. Baas. The end.

The main character is an adopted girl who has had a safe and secure Italian-American childhood in Schenectady, NY but goes in search of her birth parents. In California, she discovers that they are both dangerous and totally whacko, and that she, herself, is more a product of nature than nurture.

This has a better story line than any in Mukherjee's short story collection entitled "Darkness," but it is equally wierd. "Leave it to Me" and "Darkness" are similarly creepy books and not up to Mukherjee's usual brilliant standards.

Kim Burdick
Stanton, Delaware

Mukherjee's novel "Leave It To Me" was quite literally the epitome of anger. The story follows Devi, a woman who was adopted as a baby trying to find her natural parents and answer her questions on why she was given up. The simplified plot, however, is further complicated by older lovers (and I seriously do mean older-- girl had a serious daddy complex), crazy and unrealistic twists, and Devi's erratic behavior.

The thing I really disliked about this book was that the novel's main character Devi was just unlovable. She doesn't seem to have very many redeeming qualities; she's naive, jealous, irrational, and using this as an understatement, angry. Her mental processes jump every which way throughout the novel making it hard to follow what she is thinking.

On top of all this, the plot itself is ludicrous. The introduction was misleadingly interesting, but it has nothing to do with the story itself . The story's plot has alot of wierd, nonsensical twists which is frustrating. And though the ending is far from predictable, it's not "real".

The undertones of this book was very angry, so if you really don't feel like wasting your time to just get pissed off, don't bother with this book.

Don't buy this book, don't borrow it from the library, don't borrow it from a friend . . . in fact don't even go near it. Someone gave it me as a gift so i decided to read it. What a mistake. The story doesn't hold one's interest much, the plot isn't good. It starts off ok, and seems like it will be good, but it is one big let down. I'm disappointed. Don't say you weren't warned.