Rating: 
Summary: No thank you.
Review: Reading time is precious. I always used to finish every book I started, but as I've gotten older, I've abandoned this policy. Now I quit 1/3 of the way through if I am not enjoying a book. This book found it's way into the DISCARD pile. I really did not like it. I found it dull.
Rating: 
Summary: great free read
Review: I picked this book up at my school library randomly one day when I couldn't read anoter page for school. It was a great book! I got so into it and could feel for the characters. It was confusing at points but a great way to de stress
Rating: 
Summary: Something Missing
Review: I'd add a half star if the ratings permitted. This is an odd book from McDermott. Although all the characters are quite vivid and the mood of an endless summer virtuously spent is so well evoked, Theresa, this pied piper of a main character, is exasperatingly sweet-tempered and altruistic. The narration brims with details aimed at showing what a selfless and thoughtful caretaker Theresa is, and since it's told from the first person, the result is a self-congratulatory air. The sexual attraction between two characters almost 60 years apart in age could have been intriguing, but it was too downplayed and understated to arouse much passion in the reader. And there were other curiosities: Why didn't Theresa's parents notice signs of illness in their niece, even if Theresa was reluctant to report them? Why, in fact, were Theresa's parents so little rendered? Great characterizations, but they skimmed the surface without, at least for me, suggesting strongly enough what was beneath that surface.
Rating: 
Summary: My mother and I agree on something finally! We love it.
Review: This book just flows. I had trouble getting into it or I would have given it a highter rating. Once I did get into it, I loved it.
Child of My Heart is the tale of the South Hampton local -teenage babysitter and ersatz mother to the children of some fairly complex summer guests. She is a loving, sweet and at the end of the book...curious and insightful. If you ever loved your babysitter, your neglected little cousin or your summer neighbors, give this one a try. Not much action but a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Sunday afternoon read
Review: This is the type of book I would (and did) read on a boring, lazy Sunday afternoon. It's short, lyrical in places and somewhat intriguing. I only gave it two stars because it has obvious flaws. Some reviewers have said that Theresa, the protagonist, comes across as much too wise and smart for 15. I was like that myself, so I couldn't see it as much. What I could see was Flora, the baby, being extremely articulate and acting like an adult herself. The author puts Theresa's voice into all of the characters and doesn't really distinguish them well after that. The ending was the other major flaw of this book. It was contrived and rushed at best. I realise the author is trying for that simple, innocent, dream-like quality, but instead the ending is vague and pointless. (Yes, I did catch the extremely obvious part with the baby rabbits. I thought it was overdone.) I didn't care for this author at all. From this book, I can't see how she won any awards.
Rating:
Summary: The Old Soul
Review: Theresa, the protagonist of "Child of My Heart" is an "Old Soul," one of those young people who have knowledge of life and of the world far beyond their years. In many cultures, Theresa would be considered a sage or a seer.
What she is though is a 15-year-old teen who naturally falls into the caring of other people's children. As she says: "Because I was a child myself when I began to take care of other children, I saw them from the start as only a part of my realm, and saw my ascendance as a simple matter of hierarchy---I was the oldest among them, and as such, I would naturally be worshipped and glorified. I really thought no more of it than that...I was Tatiana among her fairies." Theresa's journey through this novel involves mostly baby steps as she goes about her business of caring for the children and pets of the rich. She is a kind of Peter Pan: young enough for her young wards to relate to; but not too old for them to be afraid of.
Theresa's parents have big dreams for her as they have made sacrifices so that she can live among the wealthy of the Long Island seashore: "I suppose it was one of the ironies of their ambition for me, of their upbringing and their sense of themselves, that they would not see me as fully a part of that brighter world of wealthy people and supposed geniuses if I did not at some point recognize that they were not. That the best assurance they would have that I had indeed moved into a better stratum of society would be my scorn for the lesser one to which they belonged." It's ironic that these ideas still exist today for they call to mind the worlds of Edith Wharton and Henry James, over 100 years ago: that a young girl can change and should aspire to improve her social status by marrying money or genius or better, both.
One of the pleasures of this novel is McDermott's lucid and telling descriptions of Theresa's neighbors: "Mrs. Richardson was one of those blunt, loud, bangs-across-the-forehead women who seemed to believe that everyone else must surely be as pleased with her as she was with herself for being so no-nonsense and direct and, as she saw it, egalitarian." McDermott's prose is so rich with the experience of living that we almost immediately think of someone in our own lives that could be described in a like manner.
"Child of My Heart" is a gentle, beautifully written and persuasively aware book that's inhabited by characters and situations that calmly though persistently tug at the heartstrings. Though its heroine is a teenager, it is written from an adult's perspective in the mature and loving style of fondly recalled memory.
Rating:
Summary: Six stars
Review: The narrator is Theresa, and her story recounts events of a summer long ago when she was fifteen and her little cousin Daisy came to visit. Most of the action takes place among the mansions of Long Island, where Theresa with Daisy in tow walks dogs and babysits, trying with heart and soul to protect the innocents who fall to her care. Dogs love her. Children love her. Men love her, too: she's gorgeous. And what she's up against as she tries to defend her little kingdom includes adults, corruption, disappointment, and-we are told from early on-death. The characters include a famous seventy-year-old artist, who, like Theresa, wants to remake the world to his own liking; her dear but remote parents; a houseful of neglected children, including a little boy whose gifts go wrong in heartbreaking fashion; a great many wonderful dogs; and little Daisy herself, who when asked if she's afraid of heights replies "I'm only afraid of falling." We learn more about Theresa than she comes out and tells us. For one thing, while she wants to create a world like that of "Midsummer Night's Dream," she knows all along that her own is closer to "Macbeth." Certain imagines stick with you: an abandoned baby in a potato field, a toddler suspended underwater in the ocean, a tree covered with candy, a lonely girl lying in bed with tears running down into her ears, and three baby rabbits, like the children of this book, unformed and doomed. McDermott is brilliant about children and about the moment that ends a childhood. You won't find a writer who writes more brilliantly about love and caring, about beauty, or about loss. A gorgeous, shattering book: not just one of the best of the year, one of the best in the language.
Rating:
Summary: Child of my Innocence
Review: With the knowledge that Alice McDermott had already won the NBA for "Charming Billy" it was my expectation that the this book would be good. I had not read her previous books, but nonetheless, no one wins the NBA and then writes trash after that, or at least, almost no one. I was not at all disappointed. While McDermott's plot line is a bit prosaic, the plot is not what is truly brilliant about this book. McDermott takes the plot, and allows it to unfold through the eyes of a pretty, intelligent and 16 year old girl way out at the end of Long Island. With a superb writing style, a truly wonderful sentence structure and an articulation that is simple but truly elegant, McDermott paints a vivid picture of a smart girl facing not so much the realities of life in coming of age, but much more, the Loss of Innocence. In virtually every way, McDermott's protagonist loses her innocence in a span of about 3 weeks. And yet, the book is subtly disguised as a sweet story about a young girl. Only when the reader scrapes below the surface of McDermott's truly elegant prose, does the reader fully appreciate the message that is being conveyed. It is with great praise, that I recommend this book to all readers of fine contemporary fiction. The book is truly worthy of being classified as current modern literature.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Deal in a Brief Book
Review: This book is the first from Alice McDermott since, "Charming Billy", won the National Book Award in 1998. A book with that type of success is certain to create very high expectations for the next work, and while, "Child Of My Heart", is very good I think it is unfair to compare it to the writer's previous work. Few authors turn out books that routinely are considered the best by those who decide awards. The book is a narrative as shared by a woman of her memories of a summer when she was 15. I think this is an important point, for some seem to find this 15 years old girl as lacking credibility. These are memories and they are subject to all the forms of error that define what memory is. There is no doubt the narrator is precocious by any measure, she has an almost Mary Poppins like effect on the children she cares for, and by her account the animals she watches as well. She is an only child, she is clearly very bright, and if she was as mature as her stunning good looks, the memories seemed to me to be credible. Certain of the remembered thoughts may be enhanced or edited, but I do not believe they are made from whole cloth. She is far from perfect and the one error she does make has consequences. Whether her taking action with her little cousin would have made a difference is unlikely, but the author keeps that to herself. Our narrator may know what she is dealing with and chooses to make the most of the summer as she can, not fighting the inevitable. For this is a confident young woman as becomes apparent in how she portrays MaCduff in her school play, defying her teachers, Nuns, to do as she feels appropriate. She also has been put in the strange situation of being an only child situated to live amongst those who might help her become more than her parents are. She lives on a portion of Long Island that is not fashionable but gives her access to the people and the homes they occupy to network, and be exposed to them, whether she pursues it or not. My main criticism is that there is too much in too short a book. Extremely complex relationships are touched on as opposed to explored. This may have been intentional as memories are never as complete as the real time event, but again that is a detail only the author knows. I very much enjoy the manner by which Alice McDermott writes, and for me that is always a great part of any book. All of the issues and situations may not have been completed for the reader, but that hardly makes the book unique. The book is definitely a worthwhile read from a talented author.
Rating:
Summary: I guess we missed it?
Review: This was our bookclub selection for Feb....and it was unanimous, no one liked the book...in fact we didn't even want to talk about the book at the meeting, which is unusual for this group of book lovers. We tend to stay focused on the book we've just read. I found it uninteresting. I didn't like Theresa, the artist or his absent wife. There was no depth in explaining or analyzing the characters and what made them tick. Why were Theresa's parents so out of touch with their daughter? What was with the artist? What was with the Moran family? No babysitter is that perfect! What were Theresa's hopes and dreams...lots of unanswered questions about the characters and too much flowery descriptions about the setting. I knew I had to read the book for our bookclub meeting..but it took great effort.
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