Belong to Me: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Marisa De Los Santos (Author) "My fall from suburban grace, or, more accurately, my failure to achieve the merest molehill of suburban grace from which to fall, began with a..." (more)
Key Phrases: alla puttanesca, Marisa de los Santos, Armand Assante, Teddy Tremain (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Cornelia Brown, heroine of de los Santos's bestselling Love Walked In, returns in a gracefully written if formulaic sophomore effort. Cornelia and her husband, Teo, move to suburban Philadelphia, where she finds it difficult to fit into the sorority-like atmosphere. Despite a bevy of domestic dramas (planning a family among them), Cornelia's first-person chapters are the quietest of the three points of view. Seemingly shallow and vicious, neighbor Piper shows her kinder side as she struggles through her best friend's fight against cancer. Though the extreme of Piper's two-facedness isn't convincing, her moments of sincerity invite genuine empathy. Cornelia also yields narrative time to Dev, a precocious teenager whose father is missing and whose mother develops a friendship with Cornelia. Dev's connection to the story is initially unclear, though he does grow close to Clare, a troubled teenager with an unconventional connection to Cornelia, and a late-breaking development grounds his role more firmly. Though each story line is a good read on its own, they don't always braid nicely, and while the predictable plot wanders into sappiness, the prose is polished and the suburban travails are familiar enough that fans of the women's fiction and higher-brow mommy lit will relate. (May)
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Product Description

Everyone has secrets. Some we keep to protect ourselves, others we keep to protect those we love.

A devoted city dweller, Cornelia Brown surprised no one more than herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to leave urban life behind and head for an idyllic suburb. Though she knows she and her beloved husband, Teo, have made the right move, she approaches her new life with trepidation and struggles to forge friendships in her new home. Cornelia's mettle is quickly tested by judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt. Perfectly manicured, impeccably dressed, and possessing impossible standards, Piper is the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she would find in suburbia. A saving grace soon appears in the form of Lake. Over a shared love of literature and old movies, Cornelia develops an instant bond with this warm yet elusive woman who has also recently arrived in town, ostensibly to send her perceptive and brilliant son, Dev, to a school for the gifted.

Marisa de los Santos's literary talents shine in the complex interactions she creates between these three women. She deftly explores the life-altering roller coaster of emotions Piper faces as she cares for two households, her own and that of her cancer-stricken best friend, Elizabeth. Skillfully, de los Santos creates an enigmatic and beguiling character in Lake, who draws Cornelia closer even as she harbors a shocking secret. And from the first page until the exhilarating conclusion, de los Santos engages readers with Cornelia, who, while trying to adapt to her new surroundings, must remain true to herself. As their individual stories unfold, the women become entangled in a web of trust, betrayal, love, and loss that challenges them in ways they never imagined, and that ultimately teaches them what it means for one human being to belong to another.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061240273
• ISBN-13: 978-0061240270
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #144,816 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Storyline and Great Writing in This Book, April 3, 2008

By	AnythngArt (Chicago, IL, USA) - See all my reviews

A refugee from intellectual city living, Cornelia Brown is the explorer of a new terrain: the burbs. She believes that her own wits and childhood environment have prepared her to live among the families who occupy its picturesque streets. However, as the book opens with her first cocktail party, Cornelia learns that settling in to her new life is not going to be as easy as she thinks; clearly, this is a foreshadowing of things to come. Her neighbor (the leader of the suburban pack) Piper quickly puts Cornelia in her place, although Cornelia is not sure just what that "place" is.

Thus begins the charming tale author Marisa de los Santos has presented in her second book, "Belong to Me." Thankfully, unlike many second novels from authors who have had a successful first book, readers can pick up and enjoy this book without knowing anything about de los Santos or the characters who inhabited her first novel. The joy from the beginning to the end of this story is complete unto itself, without history or explanation. De los Santos's strong characters and lyrical writing engage from the first pages and hold the reader's interest to the end.

Caught up in their own dramas, the women who inhabit the pages of "Belong to Me" are smart, tough, and sometimes catty. Their world encompasses the joys and pain of child-rearing, infidelity, and cancer, as well as the need to present a perfect image to the outside world. The glue that holds them together--as well as the story itself--is the human connection, the ability to reach out to a helping hand when things look most bleak.

This might sound like just another volume in the chick lit genre, but what de los Santos brings to her writing that takes this up a step is her beautiful phrasing. Pick up the book and open to any page. Somewhere therein, the reader will find some emotion or scene so beautifully described that it can only be placed in the realm of serious writers, of "literature."

This is really little surprise, given the author's vocation as poet, with a PhD in creative writing. All that study and writing practice by de los Santos has been carefully enfolded into a very compelling storyline in "Belong to Me." Without being distracted by her beautiful prose, she instead takes her (ok, largely female) audience on a lively journey that makes reading this book hard to put down, using her descriptions merely as enchantment along the way. She grounds her characters and stories in the foibles of daily life, never losing the central storyline despite her talent for turning a phrase.

In the end, "Belong to Me" is a great book because of its solid storytelling. It stands alone with its vulnerability and virtue, and it's likely that readers everywhere are going to be hearing a lot more about Marisa de los Santos.

Christine Zibas, Book Pleasures

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read "Love Walked In" first or you won't "Belong to Me", June 26, 2008

By	Nancy Martin (Pennsylvania (orig. NY)) - See all my reviews

I'm a great lover of women bonding books. Two of my favorites over the years have been The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney and Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik. The description of Belong To Me brought to mind these two favorites so I was eager to get started with it. What I didn't realize, however, was that there was a prequel to this book, Love Walked In. Had I known that, I definitely would have read them in order and most assuredly would already have had a connection with the main character Cornelia Brown. It sounds to me that Love Walked In was a good book and introduced the reader not only to Cornelia but to her "almost" daughter Clare and to her "definitely" gorgeous husband Teo. There's a lot to be said for reading books in order and I think this is a perfect example.

When I started Belong to Me, I was sitting on a plane headed for Vegas. I immediately loved it and thought it was going to be right up there with my favorites. Somewhere along the way, I stopped loving it and can't really put my finger on the reason. It might be the disconnect between the two books and the author assuming that the reader already loves Cornelia and her family having previously read Love Walked In. She has Cornelia leaving her big city life and landing in suburbia which leads to all the women "clique" issues and the loneliness that can follow.

The surrounding characters just aren't that likeable. We have Piper, caring for her cancer stricken friend Elizabeth. She's great with Elizabeth but a bear to everyone else. Lake, who has just moved there with her teenage son Dev, whose life is chock full of mysteries. I can't really say a bond is formed between these women but they seem to be working towards it. Then the author went on an unpredictable tangent and began to lose me.

So the first 100 pages I was giving it five stars. By the end, it had dropped to 3.5 to 4. I'm going to be generous with my rating and round it out to a four because, had I read the prequel, I'm sure I would have felt differently about this book and I'd hate to fault the author for my obvious faux pas. A sure lesson to be learned here.....don't read out of order!!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The connections between some of the characters are a bit too contrived; the emotional transformations, sometimes a bit too neat, May 13, 2008

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

When readers first meet Cornelia Brown, one of three protagonists in Marisa de los Santos's second novel, BELONG TO ME, it seems that her tale will be one of trading an exciting life in the big city for a quiet one in the suburbs. But what unfolds is much more complex and interesting.

Cornelia and her husband Teo have just moved from New York to a sleepy, upper-class Philadelphia suburb, and she's having a bit of trouble fitting in. She misses the pace, creativity and intellectual stimulation of the city and finds little in common with the other women, wives of professional men, she comes into contact with. She's particularly put off by her snotty neighbor, Piper Truitt. But when she meets the eccentric Lake, a single mom also new to town, she has hope that a solid friendship is developing.

Piper is a stereotypical affluent WASP ice princess. But, in de los Santos's able hands, she undergoes a radical yet mostly believable transformation. Piper and her husband Kyle are the alpha couple of the community. Piper is a mother of two, overly concerned with propriety and appearance. She is most at ease when caring for her kids and spending time with her best friend Elizabeth. When Elizabeth is diagnosed with cancer, Piper's world begins to crumble, but through the illness, she rebuilds it into one more genuine and compassionate. As all of her energy goes into caring for Elizabeth, she finds herself distanced from Kyle and her previous petty concerns and becoming close with Cornelia, the neighbor she once dismissed. Elizabeth's illness challenges Piper to change and to learn to accept not only other people but her true self as well.

Meanwhile, young Dev, a kind-hearted genius preoccupied with String Theory and poetry, is faced with his own set of challenges. Recently uprooted from his hometown after a disastrous seventh grade year, he finds himself at a new school in a new town and finally feeling happy and comfortable. Still, he wonders why his mother chose this location. Could it have something to do with the father he never knew? With the help of friends Aiden and Lyssa and first girlfriend Clare, he starts to put together the missing pieces of his life that, while exciting, unravels the carefully woven lies his mother has told him all along.

The stories of Cornelia, Piper and Dev intersect in a number of compelling ways, resulting in some good plot developments. Yet, overall, this is a character-driven novel, and it is the inner lives of the three main figures that make it such a page-turner. Cornelia's portions are written in first-person narration while those of Piper and Dev are told in third person. Her shift in perspectives is successful because the tone and pace remain consistent, and each character has a worthwhile and unique point of view. The secondary characters --- Elizabeth, Dev's friends, Teo and Cornelia's brother --- are all given just the right amount of attention, adding to and not distracting from the story.

Readers may be familiar with Cornelia, Clare and Teo from de los Santos's debut novel, LOVE WALKED IN, but BELONG TO ME stands on its own well. While the connections between some of the characters are a bit too contrived and the emotional transformations are sometimes a bit too neat, the writing is enjoyable enough and the themes of belonging, friendship and love challenged by secrets and change are universal enough to make this a recommendable title.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman