A Member of the Family: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Complicated Love
Review: I bought A Member of the Family because I'm interested in family dynamics and adoption. I'm also very fond of Sag Harbor where the story takes place. I was surprised and delighted to discover that the book is far more than a family melodrama, investigation of a single issue or portrait of a quaint town: it is a meditation on the nature of love in the tradition of the great novels.

Ms. Merrell presents a sophisticated view of our motivations for loving others (children, spouses, friends), ranging from the selfless to the utterly self-serving, by deploying seemingly unrelated subplots and characters (including a remarkably original personification of evil in the character of the upstanding town father Martin Dunn). She deftly pulls the loose strings together and, in so doing, illustrates how every individual's life is inextricable from those of others, the community, social class and the past.

The book builds the kind of tension I associate with mystery thrillers. I found I couldn't stop reading it, as if the mystery of love could be solved and the guilty parties exposed. Ms. Merrell is too profound a writer to resort to that kind of easy satisfaction. Instead she paints a picture that feels emotionally truer than any pat answers ever could.

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable
Review: I bought this book not knowing much about the emotional side of adoption, but this novel left me with even less. Suan Merrell did not develop the characters, and I did not feel a connection to any of them. By the end of the book, I was honestly skimming over the words hoping to get over the fact that I paid ... on this book. Don't bother.

Rating:
Summary: A Meandering, Not-So Believable Plot
Review: This book is not what I'd call "good." It is well written, but the content sucks.
First, this book gives adopted children, especially those from foreign countries, a very bad rap. It portrays such children as monsters incapable of caring for others. For instance, the beautiful mommy Deborah, the main character, is part of a support group for parents of adopted kids from orphanages in other countries, and all the kids either have serious disabilities or are evil.
In real life, this is far from the case. Many people adopt children from orphanages in other countries. I know for a fact that most of these children do NOT turn out to be antisocial little beasts. They often have developmental delays from neglect in orphanages but can catch up if properly cared for. The children who DO turn out antisocial and violent are the ones who are abused as infants, and such abuse does not often occur in orphanages-- you are likely to end up with a child like Michael in the book if you adopt a child who was removed from his or her home because of abuse. So the main issue I had with this book was the fact that it is far from being factual and can indeed perpetuate negative, false stereotypes.
Another bother I had with this book was its far-meandering parallel stories. About half of the book is devoted to issues other than the only one you actually give a darn about-- the Latham family and adopted Michael. Much of it describes, in depth, another local family and also a high-school secret in Chris Latham's past. I did not care about these things and ended up skimming over them. Eventually a few of these issues tie together but unfortunately that still doesn't make them interesting.
As for Michael himself, his behavior is unsettling, but let's face it-- all kids get into trouble sometimes and can even be little beasts at times. What kid hasn't gotten into a fight or damaged a structure? We're given the impression that the little monster Michael is slowly dismantling a once-pristine family life. The Lathams' biological child, Caroline, is, of course, perfectly behaved (not to mention beautiful).
I just got bored out of my skull by the meandering of the plot and the devotion of half the book to the local Dunn family, and skimmed. Other than the apparent utter lack of research and the perpetuation of sterotypes, that was the main thing I disliked.