Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Cleveland. 1997. A novel about the power and primacy of motherhood and mother love but only the right kind of mother love. Two weary stereotypes played out against each other. The Richardsons. A caricature of a middle class Shaker Heights family of six embodying the dreaded middle class middle western values of the era. Mrs. Richardson works as a journalist but not as the right kind of journalist. The author denigrates her job as both unnecessary for family support and because she writes about events in Shaker Heights, not tough investigative pieces. And then the stars. Mia and Pearl Warren. ARTISTS. Wonderful. With cliched "artistic" values and lifestyle. Brilliant of course. Free. Mia has a secret, the source of he daughter Pearl. Pearl has a secret, her relationship with Tripp Richardson, the cliched loutish but of course sexy jock of the family. Mrs. Richardson is both over and under-involved with her four children, missing Tripp's passionate relationship with Pearl, and Lexie's sexual relationship with her boyfriend which of course ends disastrously. And then the youngest daughter Izzie, who was never understood by her mother and who falls in love with the freedom, truth and beauty of the Wilsons' vagabond lifestyle. This lifestyle necessitates a change in location every six months to accommodate Mia's artistic needs. Mia is a photographer. Of course. A recorder of "truth". Actually since the photographs are doctored, changed, deformed, Mia is a "creator" of truth. Sigh. These stereotypes come to an inevitable clash over the adoption of a baby left at a firehouse. The Richardson father defends the adoptive parents, Shaker heights residents. The Warrens champion the rights of the abandoning mother, an illegal Chinese worker at the restaurant where Mia works. When Mrs. Richardson learns Mis's secret involving issues of motherhood, the Warrens flee and Izzy burns the house down and flees herself in a search for her own freedom. Ah yes. Freedom is only available to the itinerant artist whose goal is the purity of art. The only way to attain freedom is to flee those cloying middle class values. As a period piece with tired symbols and dated stereotypes the book is vaguely interesting. I suppose it correctly represents Shaker Heights in 1997. But the glorification of the "freedom" and truth of art is unexamined and frozen in time. And her denigration of Mrs. Richardson's job smacks of elitism of the worst kind. Mrs. Richardson is a target of ridicule because she is not an ARTIST like Mia and Ms. Ng herself. Just a drive by trashing of another woman's life. I wouldn't bother to buy this tired historical novel.