Girls in Trouble: A Novel by Caroline Leavitt Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Girls in Trouble: A Novel
Book Review: Interesting to see both sides
Summary: 4 Stars
It was an especially interesting book since you were seeing it from the sides of the birth mother and the adopted mother. They had such a close and special relationship before the baby, you hated to see it be destroyed by the impulsive act of Sara, the birth mother. I liked that it actually carried you through the years that followed so that you would get to see the consequences and the changes that occurred with everyone. The voices and emotions in this book were very real. I really enjoyed this book and how it ended.Book Review: authentic and moving
Summary: 5 Stars
Caroline Leavitt is a modest stylist, she writes from a visceral sense of her world and the world she observes. There are no tricks in her written prose, it is a prose which allows the heartbeat of each character to sound, their pulse to bet and flow without authorial assumptions and readymade judgements, and I think Ms. Leavitt is among our very finest. It brave not to subsume painful human truths into abstract, often overly-praised stylistic acrobatics, and often the writer who chooses this path can be passed over too easily or taken for granted-- so seamless and natural does her fictional world feel as we read, and famiiar we digest and inetgrate it and simply get up from this beautifully ad table of uadorbed literary delights and literary staple foods feeling so satsified we needn't notice how really amazing the work is. But it is brilliance to penetrate the veneer, to dare to meet up with darkness and harsh social issues realities and not to shrink from the resonsibility of facing them.And even more to write so naturally, a reader can join the journey effortessky,without threat.
For this, Caroline Leavitt deserves our fullest admiration.
Book Review: Good Book
Summary: 4 Stars
A nice little book for reading that won't be too heavy or thought provoking. Interesting premise but fairly predictable to me.Book Review: Whose baby is she?
Summary: 4 Stars
Sixteen-year-old Sara Rothman was a smart girl, destined for a brilliant future.
Then she got pregnant.
Against her parents' warnings, Sara opted to place her baby in an open adoption. The moment Sara met Eva and George Rivers, she fell in love, sure that her daughter Anne would have a great life.
The problem, though, is just how much right Sara has in Anne's life. When the Riverses invited her to think of them all as extended family, little did they imagine Sara would want to be over their home every day - bathing, feeding, holding and soothing baby Anne. Just who's the mother, anyways?
Tensions arise between the Riverses - who just want some time alone with the baby they waited so long to parent - and Sara, who was pressured by her parents to give up a child she longed to keep. Suddenly, the idea of an open adoption doesn't seem so smart.
As Sara grows more and more unhappy about losing Anne, she turns to an act of desperation - which, in turn, leads to one on the part of the Riverses'.
Years pass, but Sara is still unable to forget Anne. Is it possible to find her? And would it be a decision to enrich their lives, or make them even worse?
Leavitt does an excellent job portraying all the characters involved in Anne's life, as she alternates from their various viewpoints. It's hardly clear-cut as to who is "right" in this situation, as oftentimes, even the characters involved fluctuate in their opinions. The only thing they all have in common, however, is a genuine desire to see Anne happy.
Book Review: exceptional
Summary: 5 Stars
I think this book was masterfully done. It does a great job of portraying the positions and emotions of both sides of this open adoption, as well as the child and even of the "unknowing" father. I couldn't stop reading it. I would intend to read for 10 minutes and end up reading for an hour. I even went home on my lunch break to get the book one day in case I had a few minutes to read throughout the day... I've never done that before.