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: Girls in Trouble will break your heart
Summary: 5 Stars
The drama in Caroline Leavitt's Girls in Trouble erupts in the first line, plunging us into her heartbreaking story as we meet Sara, a teenager in the throes of labor. Leavitt never shies in her treatment of this difficult subject---the conflicted feelings and sometimes sticky relationships between birth mothers and adoptive parents, and the idea that when a child is born the ripples she creates move into the world at times in tidal waves, at others in tremors. But the tremors remain to forever influence those involved. Through her rich, radiant prose Caroline Leavitt takes us on a journey, as the best novels do, to the center of the human heart. She has created dynamic, flawed characters-parents Jack and Abby, birth parents Eva and George, boyfriend Danny, Sara and daughter Anne--and through these deft portrayals illuminates both the soul and shadow side of family ties. Reading this book I entered the lives of people in crisis, of a sixteen-year-old girl trying to unravel the complex world of adolescence, motherhood, and family. I emerged understanding family a little more, thinking, yes-this is how we are. Girls in Trouble reflects our lives in the deepest way.
Book Review: the best book I've read all year
Summary: 5 Stars
I felt as though this book was written about me, that Sara could have been my voice. Thirteen years ago, I was in my first year of Columbia when I got pregnant and Sara's journey was mine. I waited too long so adoption was the only recourse. I gave my baby to a family I thought was going to support me, and while they didn't move away as Sara's adoptive family did, they did cut me off, and the adoption agency wasn't much help, nor were all the people telling me to just move on and forget about it. And years later, I took my vacation time at my job and my savings and I did find my baby--who is no baby but a twenty year old college student. I loved, loved, loved this book and I got totally lost in the characters and the beautiful writing. I truly think it should be required reading for all kids, and all adults even thinking of adopting.Book Review: Girls In Trouble -
Summary: 5 Stars
GIRLS IN TROUBLE broke my heart - and then filled the crack it left with compassion. Having never entered into the adoption process, but having three youngs daughers of my own, I found myself completely engrossed with Caroline Leavitt's vivid and deeply profound story of a young girl faced with the most agonizing choice a woman can ever make - whether to keep her unplanned baby, or bring it into the world - and into the arms of another mother. So griddy and real are Sara's emotions here, that at times I had to peel my eyes off the page and look around - reminding myself that this story was not about me after all, but a fictional character.
Or is it? Now, when I look around and see teenage girls - working at the mall... stopped at a stop light next to me... I wonder. Is that Sara? Is that another girl in trouble?
I am a fericious reader, and I rarely write on-line reviews. But after reading GIRLS IN TROUBLE, I wanted to learn more about the author Caroline Leavitt and her work. Although this is a work of fiction, it is so clearly married to reality that it not only hooks the reader, but makes her squirm, cry and fall to her knees with gratitude that love, eventually, does heal. And it is not just Sara's story that does this (perhaps this is what makes this book go from good to great somewhere around the middle of it), it is also the adoptive mother's as well. Caroline Leavitt has managed to make Eva both antagonist and heroine - simultaneously - a skill that only a master writer can accomplish. I found myself rooting for Anne's contempt towards her adoptive mother on one page, and aching for Anne to choose Eva out of love on the next.
In the end, Caroline Leavitt gives her characters the only conclusion big enough for them: honor. Eva, Sara, and Anne, each in their own way, sacrifice a piece of themselves for one another. And it is ultimately this compassion the fills the cracks in all three of their borken hearts (on second thought, make that four, along with mine). I can't wait to see this novel come to life on screen, small or big. In a world of chick-lit and cookie-cut crime fictions, GIRLS IN TROUBLE can run - but it can't hide. Just like ABOUT A BOY or FORREST GUMP - literary treasures that arrive first in the form of a novel, GIRLS IN TROUBLE has the tension and depth, the giant soul, to be transformed into a moive. And I, for one, can't wait.
Book Review: Beautiful book
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was SO beautiful. Truly gripping. I cried so much reading it. Everyone was sympathetic, though certainly Sara much more so than Eva. Would be wonderful for a book discussion group. I can't wait to read more of this author's work.
Book Review: Great topic for a book club discussion
Summary: 4 Stars
The subjects of teenage pregancy and open adoption are sure to push alot of buttons during any group discussion, and the author certainly provides plenty of fodder for conversation. I felt for the character of Sara; young and intellegent with nothing but promise and success maped out in her future, she finds herself deep in the throws of adolescent love with a boy from the "wrong side of the tracks". An unplanned pregnancy results and Sara for all her intellegence childishly chooses to ignore things until too late. She proceeds with an open adoption which of course we know is headed for disaster. I thought the issues of maternal devotion and insecurity(by both the birth and adopted mothers), were accurately portrayed and painfully realistic. The birth father appears to have no interest in the child and although Sara is forced to move on with her life, she is never fully able to let go of the baby she left behind. The book provides a satisfying conclusion (no sugar coating here), on what is a complicated and emotionally laden issue. There are no winners here just a oddly comprised "family" struggling to make a life for themselves. A few of the characters were fairly weak (Sara's parents were paper thin, and Danny's mother was a little sterotypical), but overall a good effort by this author.