Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: Child of My Heart, by Alice McDermott

The Story: Theresa is an older woman looking back on her life, specifically her 15th summer.  Her family has moved to Long Island in order to get Theresa a good reputation with all these rich people who have summer houses in Long Island so that she can have a better chance later in life.  She has kind of become the baby/child/pet whisperer of the whole town.  Everyone trusts her with their children and she just kind of comes and goes, taking care of pretty much everyone in the neighborhood.

This particular summer, Daisy has come to stay.  She is one of Theresa’s cousins.  She’s from a huge family and frequently gets overlooked, so spending solo time with Theresa is a pretty huge deal and both of the girls are way excited about it.

The book follows Theresa’s interactions with all of the crazy families in the neighborhood, especially an aging painter whose daughter she is pretty much raising.

This is a, without a doubt, a coming of age story that is very, very different than most in this genre.

What I Thought: Let me start with the good stuff:  Alice McDermott can effing write.  The prose is beautiful.  Way, way beautiful.  The characters are written perfectly and I could picture every single person, every setting, everything.  I was there.  Totally submerged.  I’ve read a hundred million coming of ages stories and this one stood out to me.  That’s saying something.  The pacing was spot on.  The whole thing was kind of wispy and had this sense of foreboding.

And then the bad: Ok, I’m going to spoil part of this, but I have to.  I seriously do.  This 15 year old girl sleeps with a 70 year old man.  For real. And the whole thing is kind of glossed over and it’s bizarre.  I kind of felt like while the story revolved around Theresa, she was probably my least favorite character.  She was way too perfect and I couldn’t get my head around a 15 year old that preferred to spend her summer with toddlers and this old, gross man.  She was so wrapped up in all that that she kind of let her cousin waste away in front of her. So, it’s like I wanted to like her but she was just too much.  I don’t know.  Mostly the bad was that 15 year old girl/70 year old man sex scene. They need warnings about that kind of stuff.

Conclusion: I read Charming Billy a couple of years ago by Alice McDermott and I walked away with a similar feeling: good work but…  and it’s that “but” that makes me recommend this with reservations.  For beautiful writing and a beautiful cover, I say go for it but only if you don’t have anything else you’re dying to read.