Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly complicated, interesting story!
Review: After I started this one, I found out it was written by the wife of Michael Chabon - who I'm also reading right now! (Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a Pulitzer winner.) Interesting.Elaborate novel about the relationship between mother and daughter,the ties of family, the harsh reality of law. Olivia, early 20's, is getting beyond her "wild" years of political activism and campaigning for underdeveloped nations. She has a live-in boyfriend, an illegal alien from Mexico who followed her back after her activist college years spent there. As the story opens, Olivia is questioning her feelings for Jorge, making what follows even more complicated. Jorge speaks no English, and has a hard time finding work due to his illegal status. To Olivia's outrage, she discovers he's participating in a drug deal in a desperate attempt to bring in some money. Jorge gets caught, Olivia is implicated, and her aloof mother, Elaine, is brought into the picture to help Olivia out as she faces trial for drug charges. Very complicated, but realistic and eocmpletely credible story. The few characters (Add in Arthur, Elaine's long-time boyfriend, and Izaya, Olivia's bright, cocky, talented lawyer) are extremely three-dimensional and well-developed. The story line is all too realistic - and frustratingly unfair. The writing flows as well as the story rivets you. A complex and compelling novel which I highly recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: Searing, shocking and very, very good
Review: As a fan of Waldman's light-hearted mysteries, I wasn't prepared for Daughter's Keeper. As other reviewers noted, a young Olivia gets caught up in the drug trade of her hapless boyfriend. Both were naive: he just wanted to make easy money and she never realized what was going on.
And both got caught in a net that was obviously set to trap some small fish. This book is not easy to read. It's scary to realize how easily an innocent person can get caught up in the legal system, and how the byzantine system with its "mandatory minimums" and arbitrary definitions end up harming in the innocent. The federal government spends huge sums to try and imprison these people, while we have no money for drug rehab programs and health care. At one point, Olivia makes an impassioned speech to a judge about the stupidity of the system. Those who are innocent have nothing to offer as a plea bargain because they don't know anything! And she's right. Waldman does a superb job with characters -- not black and white, just real people with flaws. However, Olivia's relationship with her mother seems to pale when compared to her confrontation with the law. Between books like Daughter's Keeper and movies like Traffic, one would hope some politicians would wake up and realize we're not winning the war on drugs. The price of drugs has gone down and the quality is better, says Olivia, a sign that the market has become more efficient and has attracted more customers. We're just throwing money that might be better used elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: richly authentic voice
Review: as a lawyer who hates mandatory minimums, and as a mother of grown daughters, i really loved this book. wish i could take waldman's class at the law school where she teaches, and wish even more we could have coffee and compare notes on motherhood. what a woman!
Rating: 
Summary: No, no, no, no, no
Review: Ayelet Waldman should stick to practicing law. As a writer, she's so obviously riding the coattails of her husband, Pulitzer winner Michael Chabon, that she's become a literary embarrassment. There are writing friends of mine who write FAR better than Ms. Waldman, but will their books ever get into print? Heck, no. In fact, it's highly doubtful they'll ever even land an agent. Did Waldman have any trouble selling her book? You can bet your sweet bippy she was ushered into the head honcho's office and plied with wine and jumbo shrimp - all the big guys aching to make nice over the wife of a justly famous man. The book itself deals with serious and important material, but Ayelet Waldman is not the writer who should be carrying this flag.
Please, folks: don't waste your money. I gave it two stars for the content, but I wouldn't award even one star for the writing itself.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant story of a family in crisis.
Review: Ayelet Waldman, in a startling departure from her Mommy-Track Mysteries, has written a serious novel called "Daughter's Keeper". It is about a middle-aged woman named Elaine Goodman who owns her own pharmacy, lives with a man she loves, and is contentedly looking forward to a restful retirement. Elaine's happiness would be complete were it not for her contentious daughter, Olivia. Olivia is a college dropout and a political activist. She was jailed briefly on several occasions for participating in various protests, and she works as a waitress to support herself and her boyfriend, Jorge, an illegal immigrant. Olivia never knew her father, and her relationship with her mother has always been thorny. This uneasy mother-daughter relationship is tested when Olivia faces a series of legal and personal crises that threaten to destroy her future. Suddenly, Elaine must make some tough decisions. Should she concentrate on keeping her own life on track, or should she sacrifice her plans to help Olivia? Waldman slowly and deliberately sets up her story and she fleshes out her characters carefully. We get to know Elaine as a person who has suffered and struggled to get where she is, and who admits that mothering Olivia has never been easy for her. Olivia is a caring and compassionate individual who is too brash, naive, and impulsive for her own good. A particularly fascinating character in this novel is Izaya Feingold-Upchurch, a passionate defense attorney who helps Olivia when she gets into serious legal trouble. Waldman explores many themes in "Daughter's Keeper". How much do we owe our children, especially when they reach their twenties and act irresponsibly? What is the statute of limitations for parents when it comes to rescuing their adult children? While telling the story of Elaine and Olivia Goodman, Waldman also discusses the legal and social ramifications of the often unfair and draconian federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws. This part of the book is both instructive and extremely disturbing. "Daughter's Keeper" is a beautifully written and heartrending account of one family's wrenching journey towards understanding and reconciliation. Although it is a sad journey, it is one well worth taking.
Rating: 
Summary: Tells, doesn't show
Review: Creative writing 101 classes teach the most elementary mantra: show, don't tell. Have the characters reveal their stories, rather than bludgeoning the reader with paragraph after paragraph of exposition. Unfortunately, Waldman doesn't follow the most basic rules, and her book suffers tremendously. About 7/8 of the prose consists of the narrator explaining the characters' motivations and emotions. Waldman gives the reader no credit for figuring these out, hence the narcolepsy-inducing explanations. Characters are stick figures, created for Waldman's political agenda. And by the way, I AGREE with Waldman politically, but this book bored me to tears. While I get annoyed at Barbara Kingsolver's didaticism in her books (everything is black and white, with no shades of gray), Kingsolver's writing is terrific. Waldman's is clunky, at best. The fact that even with a famous husband, she was only able to find a small publisher to accept her manuscript, tells you something right off. Don't believe the quotes of her famous writer friends--if they didn't know her and Michael, they wouldn't get past the first page. This is the first time I've critiqued any book on these pages. I don't like to critique writers, who work so hard for very little reward. But the obvious nepotism here with Waldman's publication is so dismaying, that I feel compelled to warn others not to part with their money.
Rating:
Summary: A GREAT BOOK
Review: Do you want to read a REALLY good book? One that you can't put down? DAUGHTER'S KEEPER by Ayelet Waldman the best book I've read in a long time. Walman, besides being a smooth, even writer, weaves the hot issues of drugs, abortion, racial intergration,with most definitely the U.S. federal Court System. Some reviewers say that Waldman is prejudice concerning the system. There are thousands of stories that contradict that idea. Last there are mother-daughter issues, love, much weeping and memorable characters.
Rating:
Summary: A GREAT BOOK
Review: Do you want to read a REALLY good book? One that you can't put down? DAUGHTER'S KEEPER by Ayelet Waldman the best book I've read in a long time. Walman, besides being a smooth, even writer, weaves the hot issues of drugs, abortion, racial intergration,with most definitely the U.S. federal Court System. Some reviewers say that Waldman is prejudice concerning the system. There are thousands of stories that contradict that idea. Last there are mother-daughter issues, love, much weeping and memorable characters.
Rating:
Summary: entranced me at page one
Review: I loved this book. Can easily picture the characters in my mind and the author understands the subtlities and complexities of human nature and eloquently communicates them to the reader. A rare gift, indeed! This is one of the better books I've read this year, so I was surprised to see one very long, very negative review at Amazon. I didn't know that the author was married to a Pulitzer prize-winning novelist, but it's clear to me that sometimes genius is indeed contagious.
Some reviews are so scathing you have to wonder if something else is at play. This is not a slush-pile novel--editors should be so lucky. It's a fully-realized, well-developed piece of work.
Rating: 
Summary: Not slush-pile, but not Pulitzer Prize s tuff either
Review: I read this book through to the end and tend to agree with almost all of the previous reviews. The story (the plot) is interesting and compelling and kept me going. The author did make her point about the DEA and the federal sentencing guidelines and how the federal system eats the innocent and the amateurs, while the hard-core professional criminals are rewarded for ratting out others. I am a lawyer and this is not my field of work, but I did know a little bit about the subject. I say this because even I was horrified at the results obtained in the case the author described and I'm sure it is accurate. I think the book is worth reading just to open people's eyes. That said, the author's writing technique is not very good, use of m--dashes on every other page to break up runon sentences drove me crazy, as well as all the other things reviewers mentioned. I also felt that her characters were not well thought out or believable, particularly Elaine. If you're going to deliever such an important message, take the time to do it well,
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