Coming Back to Me

Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Story with Characters You Care About
Review: Caroline Leavitt has a thing about sisters: her highly regarded 1979 debut novel, MEETING ROZZY HALFWAY (which grew out of an award-winning short story of the same name published in Redbook magazine) dealt with a sister's struggles with mental illness. Her latest book, COMING BACK TO ME, involves a husband reaching out to his absent sister-in-law for childcare help when his wife lies dangerously ill after childbirth. Without speculating as to why Leavitt is preoccupied with sisters, it's noteworthy that she gets the delicate dance of sibling rivalry exactly right: a story thread about a misappropriated locket speaks volumes about adoration and menace existing within the same relationship.

The locket originally belongs to Suzanne, the older sister of Molly, who is wife to Gary and mother of infant Otis. As the novel opens, Gary is spending night after night with Otis at the Tastee Diner in northern New Jersey as Molly lies in the hospital, comatose from a mysterious afterbirth blood condition. Through his musings and further back to Molly's narrative memories, we learn that the two saved each other from loneliness, their tiny family unit a new beginning (heralded, a la Thirtysomething, by fresh coats of paint in the house they buy). Gary is a book designer, Molly an elementary school teacher; their sturdy middle-class professional status threatens their entrenched blue-collar neighbors. Once Molly becomes pregnant, however, some hostility melts as the neighbors realize Gary and Molly are going to "stay."

The couple's happy nesting instincts may have been meant as a counterpoint to Molly's upbringing: she and Suzanne were raised in a helter-skelter manner by lovely and stressed-out mother Angela, a one-time "Miss California Beaches" whose husband abandoned her and the girls early on and she was forced to take a succession of low-paying office jobs to stretch the spaghetti rations. While it's easy to believe that Angela's uneven parenting skills combined with a cross-country move were responsible for both Suzanne's running off with a musician at age 17 and Molly's yearning for a settled life, at times it feels as if there are two separate stories in this book that don't quite merge. One is the story of Gary and Molly, the other of Suzanne and Molly. The title implies that the story resolves in "Me," which would appear to be Molly.

But what about Suzanne? Her story is compelling: what it was like for her to live as an adolescent thousands of miles from her mother and sister, how her relationship with would-be rock star Ivan winds down, her awkwardness with her baby nephew that blossoms into love, her mistakes and gains and small satisfactions as a hair stylist. The portrait of Suzanne is so strong, loving and detailed that Molly fades into her hospital bed.

Leavitt has a real gift for characterization and storytelling. Readers won't want to put this book down because they'll care about what happens to everyone, even the casserole-gifting lady next door --- but they may find themselves wishing for a sequel focusing on the sister who gets so much wrong while trying to make things right.

--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick

Rating:
Summary: a test of devotion
Review: Coming Back to Me is a story about how the trials of real life will test your devotion, and challenge your commitments, even to those you love. It appears that we are in for a fairly straightforward love story when Molly and Gary meet, fall in love, and get married. But the complications Molly experiences with the birth of Otis bring the harsh realities of life to this little family in ways that Caroline Leavitt walks us through with a sure and steady hand.

Rating:
Summary: a rich story of despair & redemption
Review: COMING BACK TO ME is an intense read about a young couple & their yearning for a baby. When Molly arrives at the hospital to deliver, things go hellishly wrong.

& there is Gary, left with a newborn & a mountain of bills. After he calls Molly's estranged sister, she lands at his door, desperate & destitute, he is in for a lesson in both Molly's past, & coping with family & his own needs.

RebeccasReads recommends COMING BACK TO ME as a fine womanly read. Caroline Leavitt has flawlessly tackled the challenges of love & marriage, family & loss in an exciting, twisting medical nightmare, with the hope of redemption springing eternal.

Rating:
Summary: a rich story of despair & redemption
Review: COMING BACK TO ME is an intense read about a young couple & their yearning for a baby. When Molly arrives at the hospital to deliver, things go hellishly wrong.

& there is Gary, left with a newborn & a mountain of bills. After he calls Molly's estranged sister, she lands at his door, desperate & destitute, he is in for a lesson in both Molly's past, & coping with family & his own needs.

RebeccasReads recommends COMING BACK TO ME as a fine womanly read. Caroline Leavitt has flawlessly tackled the challenges of love & marriage, family & loss in an exciting, twisting medical nightmare, with the hope of redemption springing eternal.

Rating:
Summary: Coming Back to Me
Review: I loved this book! The absolute devotion of Gary, along with the brain-numbing futility of going to visit his wife day after day with no visible improvement, caring for his baby alone, and then his growing dependence on Suzanne is something I could identify with, having had a similar situation in our own family. I read this book in 2 days, then gave it to my daughter who read it in less than a week. We both cried and laughed.

Rating:
Summary: I Love It, Love It, Love It
Review: I loved, loved, loved Coming Back to Me by Caroline Leavitt. The heart-wrenching story is told without sentimentality, yet it made me ache all over for the characters, especially for Gary, as he is the character we get to know most intimately. All the main characters -- Gary, Molly, Suzanne -- have survived serious tragedies and are living through the worst of trials, but they carry on in spite of it and are ultimately redeemed by good, honest love -- and hope, which doesn't always come easy for them, but which they struggle to keep alive nonetheless. Nice doses of humor, sex, and flawed people doing flawed things are thrown into the mix like good spices in contrasting but complementary quantities.

Leavitt's writing style is easy and accessible, her metaphors and images are natural and taken from the commonplace without every being trite or contrived. I feel I know her characters personally and well. Heck, I am her characters, as their emotions and actions ring clear, clean, and true on every level.

The plot of Coming Back to Me is intriguing and kept me reading from start to finish, never once boring or confusing me. The pace is perfectly measured so that it seems completely organic to the characters and the story, with critical reveals coming at just the right times to intensify suspense and keep us reading and rooting for things to work out. As a writer myself, I know that such pacing is extremely difficult to achieve, but Leavitt makes it look easy, despite the considerable skill and intellect it required.

I would put Coming Back to Me in a league with the works of Anne Tyler, whom I adore. Though the book cover quotes a review comparing Leavitt to Sue Miller, I have to say I enjoyed Leavitt's work much more than Miller's (even though I do like Miller).

I've ordered another Leavitt novel, Living Other Lives, and can't wait to read it. I intend to work my way through her entire list, although working hardly describes my Leavitt reading experience. Reveling is more apt -- reveling in the depths of the characters as their lives and emotions are revealed to me steadily and honestly, delivered without flinching and with crystal clarity.

Caroline Leavitt and Coming Back to me are true gems. What's not to love? Highly, highly recommended. I can't get enough of her -- Really!

Rating:
Summary: More, Ms. Leavitt!
Review: I picked up this book at the library and stayed up all night reading. What a writer Ms. Leavitt is! The characters were so alive, and the situation so gripping that I was spellbound. I've just put holds on all her other novels and cannot wait to read them. More, Ms. Leavitt!

Rating:
Summary: Very simple book....too simple really
Review: If you like reading books where you absolutely do not have to think at all...then this is the book for you. Thirteen year olds would probably really enjoy it..personally I like something with a little more depth.

Rating:
Summary: True to the heart
Review: This is the seventh novel by Leavitt that I've read and enjoyed...and the seventh time that her characters have emerged from the pages to join the cast of real life people I feel I have actually met...who have become a part of my own life. In "Coming Back to Me", Gary, Molly and Suzanne are so brilliantly portrayed that I feel as though they live right down the street from my painted-over violet two-story row house in Jersey City. And guess what? I live in Southern California! That's Leavitt's gift. She doesn't merely describe characters or emotions in narrative form; she invites you to actually meet them, listen to them and feel them for yourself. Leavitt is so adept at breathing credibility into their every thought, word and action that you do feel right at home in the neighborhood! When they make "Coming Back to Me" into a movie, I've got the actors all picked out. After all, I know these characters first-hand!

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down!
Review: What I loved about this book, besides getting so immersed with the characters' lives, was the fact that they were so real and filled with life. Gary, Molly, Suzanne, and Otis had their own stories, thoughts, and feelings, which were all woven together beautifully. I thought the author wrote a lovely story about what it would feel like to go from an extremely happy situation to a scary, unknown nightmare. Images stand out in my mind, such as the feeling Gary had when he walked into Otis' room right after Molly got ill and saw the blanket she had special ordered and nearly fell apart. I felt horrible when Ivan left the car to get cigarettes and left Otis in the car. There were images, pieces of conversation, and emotions that were so vivid that any reader, whether or not they have been through a similiar situation, could relate to. It's rare when an author can make me forget about my own life and immerse me so deeply in a piece of writing, which is why I give this novel five stars. I wish I could give it more, but there aren't enough to show how much I appreciate this novel and the excellent work the author displayed.