Other Women's Children [Mass Market Paperback]

Perri Klass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 22, 1991

Dr. Amelia Stern became a pediatrician to cure children, not see them die. In a kind of bargain she strikes with herself and fate, she does everything she can to save other women's children, hoping to keep her own child safe from harm.
It's never easy. Amelia's hospital life contrasts so starkly with her cozy domestic world that she can't help but bring it home sometimes. Always available for medical emergencies and the needs of her helpless patients, Amelia begins to ignore her own needs. And her family life and marriage fade in importance as she heroically fights to save all of her children.
A tender and timely examination of a doctor's world, a mother's world, and a wife's world, OTHER WOMEN'S CHILDREN is a revealing X ray of the complications of women's lives today.
"Superb . . . A poignant literary page-turner." --The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA-- The balancing act for women of the 90s--career, wife, mother--is described in a realistic manner. Amelia Stern is a pediatrician in a Boston teaching hospital. She is also the mother of four-year-old Alexander and a devoted wife to Matt. Klass describes the characters with such clarity that readers will immediately become involved with Amelia's patients and their traumas. This is a novel of mood and feelings rather than of fast-paced action; readers are able to get inside the minds of the characters and see events unfolding through their eyes. YAs will want to know what happens to each character introduced in the book.
- Roberta Lisker, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

Dr. Amelia Stern became a pediatrician to cure children, not see them die. In a kind of bargain she strikes with herself and fate, she does everything she can to save other women's children, hoping to keep her own child safe from harm.
It's never easy. Amelia's hospital life contrasts so starkly with her cozy domestic world that she can't help but bring it home sometimes. Always available for medical emergencies and the needs of her helpless patients, Amelia begins to ignore her own needs. And her family life and marriage fade in importance as she heroically fights to save all of her children.
A tender and timely examination of a doctor's world, a mother's world, and a wife's world, OTHER WOMEN'S CHILDREN is a revealing X ray of the complications of women's lives today.
"Superb . . . A poignant literary page-turner." --The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Ivy Books (December 22, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804108579
• ISBN-13: 978-0804108577
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,854,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Klass a rare find, September 9, 2005

By 

R. Alpisa - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Other Women's Children (Mass Market Paperback)

Klass is the type of writer who has grown by word of mouth, from reader to reader, across the country. Her novels show that rarest of combinations -- a sensitivity to the finest nuances of people's lives, a fine ear for pacing and dialog and, best of all, a great story. She writes with compassion for the human condition, unfettered by either sentimentality or superficiality. Although her books are hard to put down, they are even harder to forget.

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Lives -- Mother and Physician, May 5, 2009

By 

Bonnie Brody "Book Lover and Knitter" (Port St. Lucie, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Other Woman's Children (Hardcover)

Amelia is a female pediatrician dealing with the reality of her home life - a husband and son, both loving and healthy - and the reality of the sadness of dying children that she encounters daily in her work. It is difficult of her to reconcile these two aspects of her life.

"You can't focus on the dying children. If you use dying children to draw up a scale of relative
importance, then all the healthy children end up bunched together at one insignificant end.
That won't keep them healthy. You can't protect them, you can't make deals - you may focus
on the sick, but that doesn't guarantee continued health to the one you are ignoring.

But that still doesn't show you how to stretch your life so that both kinds of importance
can be successfully accommodated". (p.278)

How Amelia learns to balance the different parts of her life and her attempts to become a more present wife and mother, make for a very moving and poignant book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Writer, February 14, 2008

By 

A. Swain (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Other Womens Children (Hardcover)

Other Women's Children is fantastic, as are all Perri Klass' writings. She's a great pediatrician and a fabulous writer.