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Just What Kind of Mother Are You?

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This showed up two days before I left for family vacation in the Dominican Republic and it was the absolute perfect fit for those airport down hours and the lounge chairs at the beach. Just What Kind of Mother Are You? is a captivating page-turner that you need to get right now, or at very least add to your must haves for summer cottage season. Without giving any spoilers away at all, Paula Daly has taken every mom’s nightmare of losing a child, shaken the plot up every so slightly, tossed in a hefty dose of shocking plot twists (I never saw them coming.) and a hint of psychological thriller. All of that combines to create a dynamite fictional adventure that starts when an overburdened and exhausted working Mom loses her friend’s child while she is supposed to be watching her. Ratchet up the guilt meter, because what could be worse than an already drained mama feeling like she was the cause of everyone’s distress?

Just What Kind of Mother Are You? was the perfect beach read for me this week. I couldn’t put it down and got sunburnt hands but only on the sides (reader’s sunburn) from holding the book and being totally immersed this week. In fact I feel like this one lends itself to potentially being a runaway 2013 hit and a clear bestseller this summer. The topic matter is universally appealing to pretty much every working mother in every first world country. The writing is solid and the plot twists come at breakneck speed.

Lisa Kallisto is a working mother of three, managing married life just barely, and parenting her kids, most days just adequately enough, while running an animal shelter and struggling to carve out adult friendships as well. She is married to a man who adores her, a man who drives a taxi for a living. She grew up, the narrator tells us, in her father’s second family. Her childhood comes to a fast end when her dad’s first wife arrives in her neighbourhood one day asking to see his “bastard.” Her visit culminates in a suicide attempt in front of the child. She tells little Lisa to make sure she tells her father about the visit and then slits her wrists in front of her, having sent the other wife out to fetch some sugar for tea.

Kate Riverty is Lisa’s neighbour. She appears to have it all under control, the Mom with the best kids, the PTA fundraising queen, the most accomplished wife who works hard to keep her family immaculate and, yet there is just the slightest hint, she is a bit too perfect. Lisa works far to hard to aspire to the ideals that Moms like Kate set and then one night when Kate’s daughter is supposed to be sleeping over at Lisa’s home, she drops the ball and Kate’s daughter Lucinda disappears. In their small town  pedophile has been lurking and one young girl has already turned up raped and disoriented. Kate, Lisa and their rest of the town worry Lucinda is the next victim.

Just What Kind of Mother Are You? has it all. The plot is fast, the characters are well rounded and this concept is not one I have seen perverted well in fiction form until now. So what complaints do I have, if any? This is a nearly perfect thriller that captivated me from start to finish. Just What Kind of Mother Are You? doesn’t have the kind of lyrical writing that you will recall for weeks and months or rhapsodize over at book club. There are few poetic flourishes and that’s more than okay, because that style of writing would be out of place here. Just What Kind of Mother Are You? is a story well told, executed with great timing.

Paula Daly is a mother and physiotherapist. This is her first novel. Let’s just say I hope she is not a one hit wonder, because this is a great read.

Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly, Fiction, published by DoubleDay Canada, is $22.95 in paperback, 314 pages. This gets my full $$$$$ out of $$$$$. Loved it.

Shadow Girl: Young Adult Book Review #adoption

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One of my greatest literary indulgences these days is YA literature. I am increasingly blown away by the quality literature coming from authors working in this genre. Shadow Girl is one new paperback novel I couldn’t wait to get my hands on because of the adoption, foster care and poverty themes that run throughout. The promotional blurb alone led me to believe it would captivate both myself and my daughter, Payton. Together, we review appropriate young adult books here because she is as voracious a reader as I am.

Paula:

Shadow Girl is a beautiful story, sad and gentle, with some small alarming moments that provide a genuine insight into how far too many young people and children live in North American society. It is a substantial social issues and coming of age story that revolves around how to negotiate that territory when you are basically alone in the world left to fend for yourself. Jules is 11 and her father is an alcoholic. We are told early on that her mother left the duo and no reason is provided for that, but this lack of background on Mom is not a detractor to the plot.

Jules father is emotionally abusive to her when he is drunk and overwhelmed. His character, to me, was accurate, more concerned about his next drink and his next girlfriend or party. Unfortunately Jules is left many nights all by herself at home and she develops quite a tough shell. She spends many afternoons hanging out at the local shopping mall where she gets to know a salesperson who will change her life in more ways than one.

After a lengthy bender, Jules father discovers that she has been apprehended by Children’s Aid. This begins a different section of Jules’ life. She is devastated to be taken from her father, despite the fact that he hasn’t been a parent to her in any respect for many years.

I enjoyed the author’s skill in showing details through the narrator’s eyes. Morrison never over explains or tells the reader what to think. For instance she describes the face of the father’s new girlfriend as puffy and red in a way subtle enough to inform everyone she too is likely an alcoholic or addict.

I could have handled more from this story and felt it ended a bit too neatly and a bit too quick. I am not a fan of literary and television accounts of foster care and fully understand there are all sorts of people who take care of kids in all kinds of cities throughout North America, but many depictions of foster care are inaccurate, in my experience. Obviously, an antagonist and conflict were necessary to drive the plot, but I think the author might have used a more creative tool than the insensitive foster parent cliche.

While I really enjoyed the naive narrator in Shadow Girl and have no problem recommending this for any child over the age of nine, I had minor issues with it as an adult. I found Jules to be a very gentle version, almost a muted down version, of most children I know who have come through the child welfare system. She remains naive and sweet and never really loses it. She escapes her foster care situation every chance she gets and she escapes her father’s home as well, but I expected more from a child raised by an alcoholic and shuffled through homes at a crucial age in her development. It seemed to me the real life Jules would have been acting out one heck of a lot more than this character did.

Patricia Morrison is a Canadian who lived in Toronto for many years but now lives in British Columbia with her family. She worked for the Ministry of Children and Families for many years in child welfare. This is her first novel.

My rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$. ( This is the kind of book that could easily be built into school curriculum. It is gentle and provides a great insight into poverty for young adults.)

Payton: (in her own words)

Shadow Girl is an emotional book, filled with happiness, sadness and anger, even frustration. It is set in 1963. I think this is probably similar to what one of my friends experienced when she was living with her birth family, before she was apprehended and placed in foster care in Ontario. The main character Jules is the same age as me. She has many of the same moods as I do and I completely understand her emotions. I feel the same way sometimes. When I read these books I like to put myself in the character’s shoes, just as I would if I were acting in a play. I like doing this because it helps me to feel what they are feeling. At times this was difficult with Jules because her life is sad, but I liked her imaginative spirit and how well she used it to express herself in the book. She made a lot of forts to keep herself feeling safe and she imagined all sorts of things like being a princess, a brave knight, a warrior and a superhero.
Jules is very creative.

I wish that every child who went into foster care could move quicker to adoption but still had rights to see their birth family when able to do so. More people should read books like this so they understand children who are in the child welfare system. I will probably lend Shadow Girl to many of my friends.

I had trouble putting this book down during free time at school and when I was reading on the school bus. The main character is very compelling. I liked that she was my age. It made me sad to read about her relationship with her Dad. I would read more by this author because she created a great character in Jules. She was strong and creative and she escaped her foster home often because she said it was a house full of strangers. I was hoping for a happy ending for Jules and her Dad.

Shadow Girl is by Patricia Morrison, Tundra Books, $12.99, paperback, 2013, 217 pages.

Payton’s rating was $$$$ 1/2 out of $$$$$. (Loved it.)

Please Look After Mom: A Review

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Please Look After Mom is a beautiful, sad and lyrical tale for anyone who has ever had a Mom or been a Mom. This one came to me as part of the national book club influencer program for http://www.EverythingMom.com and I found myself reading it with difficulty. This is not an easy story. The plot begins when the mother of a successful family in Korea goes missing at a train station in Seoul. It is an amazing rapid start to the plot that cannot help but hook you instantly. The mother, it is revealed, has been suffering stunning headaches and previously battled breast cancer. Through each one of the grown children, the mother’s story is revealed slowly as that of a young girl who grew up in poverty in the Korean countryside and could not be educated or kept safe beyond a certain age. So instead she was presented to a man, a stranger, for an arranged marriage. Together they build a home and have four children. The young mother excels at feeding and nourishing things. Her gardening ability is unparalleled. Everything she touches blooms and her young family grows strong and successful. But they move on and for the most part still see their mother as she is defined within the context of home. The mother is a martyr and she goes to great extremes to nourish family and farm. This is a book with a unique narrative style utlizing the second person throughout. That is a quite uncommon technique as most novelists employ first person or third person. Often second person is tricky and not well done. But here the effect is one of drawing the reader fully into the story almost as their own character, a family member themselves participating in the retelling of the mother’s life and the search. It is a remarkable accomplishment. Some chapters are told from the viewpoints of the different children and the husband as well. As we meet each one of the adult children we discover them realizing how little they know of their mother’s inner life. It is a sad statement of fact that the daughter, a writer, when preparing a poster seeking help to find the mising mother, doesn’t know her mother’s true birthdate. A further sad statement on the marriage is revealed in the chapter when the hard as nails father of the family returns to their marital home and lays in bed overcome with grief that astonishes even him. He reflects on his habit of always walking too far ahead of the mother as a habit that may have led to her disappearance. And he understands too late how uncaring this one daily ritual must have seemed to his spouse. He understands too late also that he should have fought harder for better health care for his talented and undemanding wife. He feels guilt and shame and suprising amounts of love. Similarly each of the children realize the many sacrifices their mother made daily and they wonder if she was ever happy. They are all healthy and very successful in their fields. “After Mom went missing, I realized there’s an answer to everything. I could have done everything she wanted me to. It wasn’t important. I don’t know why I got under her skin over things like that.” Please Look Ater Mom is sad and beautiful and not for the faint of heart. It is a great story of sacrifice and, despite its fictional basis, speaks volumes about family relationships. It speaks to of the heart’s many facets and the grief that comes with losing your strongest anchor in the world. “Even though Mom’s missing, summer will come and fall will come again and winter will come, like this. And I’ll be living in a world without Mom.” The daughter has always had such a complicated relationship with her mother, but she alos realizes her mother’s impact too late. She wrestles as an unmarried female with whether her mother succeeded in life, or was ever happy or content. She grapples too with how good a daughter she was or was not. Her desparate search is weighted with all of the events in her past and her unexpressed sentiments. It is pure tragedy. It is a rare book that causes a reader to reflect on their own life with an eye to change. This one has that ability.

Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-Sook Shin, is by Random House Canada. $29.95 hardcover and 237 pages (translated from the Korean)

This is a $$$$ 1/2 out of $$$$$.

I received a copy of this book for free in order to review it.