Customer Reviews

Unexpected Child

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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This is a smart and gracefully written novel that presents a complicated mother-daughter relationship without the usual cliches, an earlier period of the AIDS epidemic without any reductive portraits, and the complicated inner life of a woman in transition whose actions and choices are at times surprising and always interesting. And it includes an extremely convincing child character and a final scene that leaves a reader poised to continue thinking about the characters and the story.

The three key relationships in this novel--adult daughter to mother, woman to parentless girl, "client" to therapist--are all maternal or surrogate-maternal. Without boisterousness or fanfare, the author shows that the maternal drive has many faces. In this book the motivation behind motherhood can be altruistic or suspect, or both at once. Meg Krantz ends up (implicitly) forgiving her mother Charlotte for her shortcomings at the same time as she steps determinedly out of Charlotte's world to follow her own unique notions of how to make a child secure in the world. A lovely book.

I'm really glad I didn't let the cutesy cover photo of a pink-cheeked baby keep me from reading this book. A friend of mine highly recommended it, but the picture on the cover was a real turn-off and made me think that the story and the writing would be simplistic and sentimental. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. This book tells a complicated and layered story. The way it's written is subtle and deep. And if you believe, as I do, that AIDS is far from over in America (even though most people would rather forget about it), then you'll want to read this moving and vivid novel.