The Third Child: A Novel [Paperback]

"The Third Child" is a combination romance, coming-of-age-story, political thriller, social commentary, and psychological portrait. That's a lot of baggage for one novel to carry, which may be why it's only partially successful. Melissa, the heroine, is the neglected third child of a politically prominent family. She is more of a prop than child to her ambitious conservative parents, and, compared to her brothers and sister, a less than satisfactory prop at that. As a college freshman, she feels free of their domination for the first time and tries to create a life for herself without them. Just how successful she is at doing this is debatable, since she quickly meets and falls in love with Blake, a fellow freshman. Melissa finds herself besotted with Blake, who is the mixed-race adopted son of her parents' long-time nemesis and a man with an agenda of his own. Using her own anger at her family, he manipulates her into helping him hack into her family's computer files to find dirt that will bring her father down. The whole thing ends badly, of course, leaving poor Melissa far worse of than she was at the beginning.

Piercy tell the story from Melissa's point of view, so it is her feelings we see. This can make for some frustrating moments for the reader, especially towards the beginning of the book, where Melissa comes across as whiny, albeit whiny for a reason. There are other parts where you just want to yell at her for her naivete--any intelligent reader can tell that Blake is bad news--he's that glittering dangerous object that attracts but destroys. His manipulations are obvious, even though Melissa finds ways of excusing them. One of the great ironies of the book is that poor Melissa, having escaped her controlling parents, has landed in the arms of an equally controlling lover. She may perceive their situation as that of Romeo and Juliet, but is it really? Virtually all parties in the book tell her at some point to beware, to take things slowly. She ignores them all.

There aren't a lot of plot surprises in "The Third Child," although there is a certain amount of suspense in seeing how things unravel. But the pleasure of the novel lies in following Melissa's responses. It's also part of the sadness.

After 140 pages of The Third Child, I did not care one whit about these characters and in fact found them grating on my nerves. Melissa comes off as extremely whiny, needy, and unappreciative of what she's been given. Granted, her parents (stereotypical treatments themselves of a politician and his dominant wife) have not made her the center of their universe, but she didn't exactly make me want to root for her with her constant griping about how horrible her life is. The whole Dickinson sibling set is also stereotypical: the good son, the obedient daughter, the neglected daughter, the rebellious boy.

And don't even get me started on Blake. This is supposed to be an 18-year-old college freshman? Please. He's a condescending jerk who treats Melissa like his property.

Also, when was this story set? I assumed modern day, but one of Melissa's classmates actually says, "She wouldn't be down with it." I haven't heard that phrase since the 1970s. This was just one of several inconsistencies that irritated me. And if Blake called Melissa "babes" one more time, I think I might have lost my lunch.

Instead, I just regretted the time I spent reading this drivel and started in on "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. Now there's a novel with complex characters.

The heroine of the story is Melissa. Melissa is the daughter of a Republican senator; she attends Wellesley. She meets an adopted boy of unknown racial descent and begins a love affair with him.

Melissa hates her parents who are cold and bad, presumably because they are Republican. On the other hand, she is obsessed with "Blake", who is distant, secretive, at times surly, and who nearly forces her to have sex with him the first time they are alone together, saying "I'm only taking what's mine." Hmmmmmmmm. Wow.

But perhaps the hardest thing for me to get past were Blake's comments about his parents. Or rather, lack of them. Although he was adopted by his parents at birth, when asked about his parents for the first time, Blake says that he doesn't have any, because he was adopted. His adoptive parents raised him and are sending him to an expensive college; but he *doesn't have any parents because he was adopted*. Then who are the people who raised him?

I have said elsewhere that I would read Marge Piercy's grocery list. I have to amend that statement. I could not bring myself to finish this book. I found the heroine ditzy; the "hero" was a *complete* jerk; and the "villains" (Melissa's Republican parents) painted with broad, stereotypical strokes (cold-hearted, racist, want-to-kill-your-grandma kind of people).

Marge, I hope you were going somewhere with all of this; but I won't be finishing the book to find out.