Customer Reviews

A Member of the Family

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

"A Member of the Family" graphically explores an almost unutterable question: What if you don't want your five-year-old? In this case, the young boy is an adopted Romanian orphan named Michael, welcomed into the seemingly perfect Latham family, a dynamic trio of smart, well-educated father, mother and daughter who lives in Sag Harbor, NY.

Michael -- it becomes increasingly apparant -- has attachment disorder, and the brutal manifestations of this are tearing apart the Lathams.

Susan Merrell manages to be everywhere at once in this compelling novel. She captures the daily intimacy within a family, the difficulties universal to parenthood, and the moral and ethical conflicts surrounding adoption. She also creates a breathtakingly detailed small town life, managing all the many graceful threads that stitch together a community. The reader will recognize the subtle social protocols and rules if she or he has ever been part of a tight (or seasonal) community. Michael's story becomes more than one family's crisis; the whole town contributes.

With neither maudlin sentimentality nor moral preachiness, Merrell stirs up a ghostly subject which grips the reader completely until the final page.

I bought A Member of the Family because I'm interested in family dynamics and adoption. I'm also very fond of Sag Harbor where the story takes place. I was surprised and delighted to discover that the book is far more than a family melodrama, investigation of a single issue or portrait of a quaint town: it is a meditation on the nature of love in the tradition of the great novels.

Ms. Merrell presents a sophisticated view of our motivations for loving others (children, spouses, friends), ranging from the selfless to the utterly self-serving, by deploying seemingly unrelated subplots and characters (including a remarkably original personification of evil in the character of the upstanding town father Martin Dunn). She deftly pulls the loose strings together and, in so doing, illustrates how every individual's life is inextricable from those of others, the community, social class and the past.

The book builds the kind of tension I associate with mystery thrillers. I found I couldn't stop reading it, as if the mystery of love could be solved and the guilty parties exposed. Ms. Merrell is too profound a writer to resort to that kind of easy satisfaction. Instead she paints a picture that feels emotionally truer than any pat answers ever could.

In "A Member of the Family," Susan Merrell asksquestions too difficult to be normally exposed to society -- moralquestions that tug on the very strings of human interaction. Through exquisite subplots, livid and constantly developing references to the many characters' painful pasts, and, mainly, the daily challenges of all 4 members of the Latham family, the value of human realtionships is examined and compared to that of responsibility. In no way is this the story of only 4 characters; this story thoroughly covers the unique town of Sag Harbor from "locals" to "city people", from rich to poor, from content to unhappy to dead. While the town itself is brought to color, seemingly random people are brilliantly created to interact and grow among each other and their respective pasts, leading up to a brilliant conclusion in which Susan Merell attacks the weight of responsibility. Not only is there responsibility in how to deal with their adopted son, Michael, but there is responsibility even in accepting that there is a problem, in Chris Latham's responsibility for the past, in Deborah Latham's reasoning of why she choses to befriend certain people, and, prehaps most vividly, in the horrific relationship between Michael and his sister, Caroline. Susan Merell therefore tests responsibility to unforseen levels, and, regardless of your agreement with character's reasoning, every character acts in interesting, unique, yet well thought out ways. This novel is gauranteed to pose questions most people never thought about (mainly yet not only about the possible reversibility of the adoption process), and, therefore, further educate the reader on the very nature of human interactions and relationships. This is the best book I have read in quite some time, and I could not recommend it more.

I loved this book. The author paints such a detailed picture of this little town and all the people in it that you feel you know each one personally. She makes us think about ourselves, our committments to others, and what we might do in this same situation. Brace yourself. And don't expect to go to bed until you've finished the last page.

Susan Merrell's "A Member of the Family" is a haunting, special and superbly written novel about an adoption gone wrong and a family's struggle to survive it. Written in a comfortable and illustrative style (like Gutterson's "Snow Falling on Cedars" or "East of the Mountains"), the details of this book takes you into the personal and troubled lives of Chris and Deborah Latham and their struggle to deal with their adopted son Michael. Michael is not quite ready to fit into their family. Merrell shows her extraordinary skill in her depiction of small town life, and the details of the everyday relationships of the people who live there.

This story causes you to ask yourself - - what would you do if you were in the same circumstance? Be prepared to stay up late! It's a great read that you can't put down until the last page!

This book drew me in, but I got very impatient with the side storylines. I had faith that there was a reason she included them, but in the end, I was left wondering, why were these other characters and their backgrounds explored in depth? I had to really concentrate to understand how everything fit together.

If the whole book had been just about the family and the boy, I would not have been able to put it down. As it was, I was bored at times.

The characters in this book were so real to me. I will never see the choices I make about family so simply again. The way one person affects a family, the way one family affects a town, this story was beautifully woven and so moving. You won't be able to put it down.

I loved this book. While the story is painful at times to read, it touched my heart. Anyone who is part of a family (all of us) will find something to identify with in this brilliant portrayal of a family in crisis.

This book works on many levels. The writing is beautiful--the characters are superbly drawn, the emotions ring true, the settings are visible and the story itself is compelling. This book is probably headed for the Oprah Book Club.

If you're a parent, even if your children aren't adopted, you will come away from this book comforted by the fact that you're not alone when it comes to having to make agonizing decisions.

If you're a mystery fan, although this is not a who-dunnit, you will enjoy the element of suspense that is woven into the story.

Merrell writes about tough dilemmas. What would a parent do if a child threatened to destroy another child and the marriage? We may know how we would react, but perhaps we don't. . . I've found that this is a book that sparks lively discussions. It's a story of heartbreak. And of just how complex modern life has become.

Merrell's novel is complex and beautifully drawn. She knows how to create characters. Her people jump off the page. We feel their agony even as they're confronted with one of the toughest decisions any parent can ever face.