Review by Booklist Review
"Maggie Crown was pregnant with her daughter's baby and she was alone." As the opening sentence of a novel about family relationships, that is a winner! Maggie, divorced, a scientist, lives alone in a somewhat peculiar existence. Her big suburban house, the divorce settlement, is falling apart around her ears. She never seems to eat a proper meal and shows little maturity in her behavior. The uncommonly close relationship she has with her daughter does little to lighten the guilt Maggie feels for her daughter's congenital infertility, and so she reluctantly agrees to be the "gestational surrogate" for her daughter's baby. The pregnancy brings hormonal swings and uncertainty and an increase in self-absorption and recklessness that cause enormous difficulties for those around her. It also brings her feelings of unhappiness to a head. What is it that she wants? Figuring that out and acting on it does not come without a price. Old relationships fail, and new ones are forged; but in the end she finds a contentment that had eluded her. A very engaging book. --Danise Hoover
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
HOriginally titled The Altruist, this debut novel from an accomplished short story writer asks questions that are as much ethical as emotional. What bonds tie mother to daughter? What justifies profound sacrifice, or that sacrifice's retraction? Kaplan explores these complex issues intimately and with extraordinary skill. Maggie Crown, 48, agrees to bear the child that her infertile daughter, Dale, desperately wants. Behind Maggie's decision lie decades of doubt about her own maternal performance: Dale interrupted Maggie's career as a scientific researcher and trapped her in a miserable marriage. Now divorced and independent at last, Maggie feels buried by the weight of her pregnancy as her daughter grows inexplicably distant. Midway through her pregnancy, Maggie falls into a relationship with her boss (and best friend's husband), Ben Wakem. Dale, who is having her own marital troubles, is unsympathetic and angry. The tangled situation grows knottier when Maggie gives birth to Lily, and Dale proves to be a careless, even dangerous mother. Maggie faces the wrenching possibility of withdrawing the greatest gift she has ever givenDand confronting the malice that hides behind her closeness to Dale. Although not far from "Movie-of-the-Week" fare in concept, Kaplan's novel is subtle in execution, yielding a nuanced insight into the treacherous but redemptive nature of maternal and romantic bonds. Agent, Jennifer Carlson. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
If being a mother is the ultimate sacrifice, then a daughter's asking her mother to carry a baby for her is the ultimate imposition. At least that's the way it seems in this first novel from Kaplan, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for The Edge of Marriage. Fortyish, divorced Maggie has sullenly agreed to serve as surrogate mother for the baby of her sterile daughter, self-centered Dale, who is still in her twenties and obsessed with being a mother only because she can't bear a child. Meanwhile, Maggie is renewing an affair with co-worker Ben, who's been married for years to her best friend. And Dale's husband is fooling around with one of his high school students. These people ought to be in family therapy, not exploring surrogate parenthood. The prose is clear and proficiently crafted, and the narrative maintains suspense as the reader wonders what these awful people will do next. Ultimately, however, the characters' limited insight into their own pettiness and self-indulgence becomes tiresome. No doubt many readers will enjoy this story of selfish people in contrived relationships, but women's fiction should aim higher than this. For larger fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/00.]ÄReba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Rather than the overwrought tearjerker it might have beenmother acts as surrogate for her infertile daughterKaplan (stories: Edge of Marriage, 1999) delivers an affecting and often biting portrait of family relationships. Born without a uterus, Dale is desperate to have a baby. Adoption has proven difficult, and it seems all avenues are closeduntil Dale reads in the paper of a woman who consents to carry a baby for her daughter. After much persuading, Dales 48-year-old divorced scientist mother, Maggie, agrees to bear the fertilized egg of Dale and her husband Nate. It seems simple enough (or as simple as these things ever are) to carry the child and at delivery hand it over to the new parents. What Maggie doesnt count on is the growing attachment she feels for the baby growing inside, or Dales surprising detachment from both Maggie and the prospect of motherhood. But life becomes even more complicated for Maggie: not only does she fear her scientific research may again be put on hold (the first interruption to her work came with Dales birth), but she begins a passionate, uneasy affair with Ben, a fellow scientist and husband to her best friend Doris. When the baby is born, what Maggie has feared (or hoped) happens. Dale seems incapable of caring for Lily, and Nate is no help as he copes with the repercussions of an affair he had with a student. Maggie takes Lily, and she and Ben (Doris has kicked him out of the house), play at being young parents again. Kaplans instinct for character development succeeds in converting straight-from-the-headlines plotting into events that constitute natural progressions in already damaged lives. Though in love with Lily, Maggie knows the arrangement wont last: eventually the pieces of normalcy will fall back into place, leaving all to reevaluate the meaning of family and trust. A solid, well-written first novel that successfully avoids the saccharine and melodramatic.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
