From Publishers Weekly
Among the recent spate of adoption memoirs, the voices of birth mothers have been woefully underrepresented. O'Brien covers the territory in her debut novel spanning nearly 20 years, beginning in 1980—less than a decade after the legalization of abortion and the advent of open adoptions. Hillary Birdsong, 16, has felt adrift since the death of her idealized older brother in a fraternity hazing ritual four years earlier. Emotionally neglected by her perpetually grieving mother, Hillary clings to glamorous party boy Miles, becoming pregnant during a summer fling when he vacations in her small Maine resort town. Unsupported by Miles and her parents, Hillary waits out her late pregnancy in a Catholic girls' home. Her son, Tom, is adopted, and Hillary spends the next 18 years putting her life back together while anticipating annual letters from Tom's adoptive mother and awaiting the day when she can legally interact with her son. Beyond some florid description and artificial dialogue, O'Brien's narrative does convey the long healing process after giving up a child for adoption. But the novel's long time span seems vague and undeveloped, making readers feel as if they, like Hillary, are just biding time until the mother and son's eventual reunion.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Sixteen-year-old Hillary Birdsong has been at loose ends ever since her much-loved older brother died at college during a fraternity hazing ritual. Her distracted, grieving parents don't seem to have the energy to keep her in line, and she grows increasingly wild. When she meets a rich, charming New York City teen who is summering in her Maine hometown, she ends up pregnant. Within her insular community, there's no escaping the consequences of her impetuous love affair, and her parents send her away to a Catholic home for unwed mothers. All through her pregnancy, through the awkward conversations with prospective couples looking to adopt, she remains deeply ambivalent about whether to give up her child. But when she meets unconventional artist Lola and her caring husband, James, she decides to give them her son. It is a decision that will haunt her for the next 18 years. This first novel contains some awkward pacing and dialogue, but it vividly conveys the enormous cost of being forced to make such a painful decision at such a young age.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
