The Crossley Baby

Rating:
Summary: Maybe I was reading a different book...
Review: ... than the reviewers. I found this to be pseudo-literary, interiorly-focused drivel. While the premise was somewhat interesting [the reason for the second star] I found the writing as annoying as that of Erica Jong, who turns out the same kind of cutesy closet philosophy and know-it-all narrative.

Yuck. Stick with genre BDSM, Jacqueline.

Rating:
Summary: Three sisters in an amazing and touching comedy of manners
Review: At the heart of this wonderful book are three sisters, Bridget, Jean and Sunny, all of them very different from one another. Jean is an executive on the fast track, with a biting wit and hardened, calculating side. Sunny is a mother, wife and wonderful friend to those who know her. And Bridget...is the ethereal spirit who doesn't quite seem grounded in reality.
Although the book's title makes it seem as though it would focus on a baby, this isn't the case. I was absolutely riveted by this novel, which isn't so much about a baby (The Crossley Baby in the book's title) but about the various ways in which family members relate to one another and how an unexpected turn of events affect their connections, for better or worse.
Beautifully well-written, with the humor, detail and depth of a classic, this is a book to be savored. While updated for today's readers, it reminded me of Jane Austin novels, creating a whole world for the reader to inhabit, complete with people that seem to jump from the pages, eccentricities and all.

Rating:
Summary: dry, wry, fun
Review: From the reviews, I expected "The Crossley Baby'" to be yet another attack on "career women," another hymn to stayathome mothers. In fact, it's neither. Jean, the hard-driving businesswoman sister, is a wonderful comic invention -- watching her always get what she wants is fascinating, and , like the serpent in the bible, she gets all the best lines, too. Sunny, the "nice" suburban-mom sister, gets what she wants too -- but in the process she has to toughen up a bit and shed some of her illusions about what you can get with a smile. I loved Carey's dry wit--very sharply observed.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe I was reading a different book...
Review: From the reviews, I expected "The Crossley Baby'" to be yet another attack on "career women," another hymn to stayathome mothers. In fact, it's neither. Jean, the hard-driving businesswoman sister, is a wonderful comic invention -- watching her always get what she wants is fascinating, and , like the serpent in the bible, she gets all the best lines, too. Sunny, the "nice" suburban-mom sister, gets what she wants too -- but in the process she has to toughen up a bit and shed some of her illusions about what you can get with a smile. I loved Carey's dry wit--very sharply observed.

Rating:
Summary: dry, wry, fun
Review: From the reviews, I expected "The Crossley Baby'" to be yet another attack on "career women," another hymn to stayathome mothers. In fact, it's neither. Jean, the hard-driving businesswoman sister, is a wonderful comic invention -- watching her always get what she wants is fascinating, and , like the serpent in the bible, she gets all the best lines, too. Sunny, the "nice" suburban-mom sister, gets what she wants too -- but in the process she has to toughen up a bit and shed some of her illusions about what you can get with a smile. I loved Carey's dry wit--very sharply observed.

Rating:
Summary: Not enjoyable
Review: I was so looking forward to this book after reading a "literary" review but was so disappointed. The premise was good but the book didn't deliver. I stuck with it to the end, but it didn't help.

Rating:
Summary: Oh Dear Lord
Review: It is the substance of weepy television melodramas and bad Diane Keaton films. Two estranged women vie for the right to adopt the daughter of their deceased single-mother sister, the unfortunate victim of a botched hysterectomy.

The scenario is trite. The manner in which American novelist Jacqueline Carey presents it is sublime, an unexpectedly complex examination of the imperfections and virtues present within everyone.

The Crossley Baby, Carey's third effort, never becomes the novel of courtroom anguish and tearful reconciliations it threatens to be. What would in the pens of lesser writers be the lynchpin of the drama Carey wisely situates in the background, allowing her prominent flair for authentic-feeling characters to take centre stage.

The sisters are an acute study in the vast differences in personality that can be found within the same family context. Jean, as close to an antagonist as Carey provides, is a cooly efficient businesswoman, valuing commerce and financial success above her personal attachments, and believing "it was not cost-effective for a person like her to wait in line at Toys "R" Us."

Sunny, by contrast, is a warm, loving mother, an intelligent woman who married for love, and harbors reserves of strength unbeknownst to her. Bridget, the mother of the "turkey-baster daughter," is a figure of mystery to both remaining women, a willowy flower-child type whose offbeat comments and unusual lifestyle stymie the surviving sisters.

Carey takes great pains to present each sister as an amalgam of both their personal views and the perceptions of others. Sunny sees the brittle Jean as vain and shallow, a person who earns "reward for behavior of no benefit to the world." Conversely, Jean despises what she views as Sunny's waste of her life, a beautiful woman who could have easily settled for any of her numerous rich suitors, but instead opted for domestic prison.

Carey gently intertwines the sisters with philosophically larger issues of race and class. She masterfully switches gears throughout the narrative, parallelling Jean's high-prices world of corporate headhunters with Sunny and her husband Leon's landlord duties managing tenement buildings in Harlem.

It is Carey's peppery wit, her precise and engaging observations which propel the characters beyond their stereotypical `super-women' underpinnings. She has a sharp ear for nuance, Jean and Sunny always responding to strife in startling yet intensely convincing techniques. A reader may choose sides, but Carey is careful not to judge.

Jean is almost preposterously unprepared for sudden motherhood, yet Carey refuses to let her predicament devolve into broad farce. Jean is nothing if not a survivor, even if she may never understand the appeal of raising a child.

The Crossley Baby (a deliberately misleading title) ends on a surprising note, a conclusion at once unconventional and yet perfectly in tune with the characters. Nobody wins. Accommodations are made. Jacqueline Carey has provided an exceptional story, a family novel that constantly ambushes the reader with lyrical insight and brittle humour.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly effective ode to motherhood
Review: It is the substance of weepy television melodramas and bad Diane Keaton films. Two estranged women vie for the right to adopt the daughter of their deceased single-mother sister, the unfortunate victim of a botched hysterectomy.

The scenario is trite. The manner in which American novelist Jacqueline Carey presents it is sublime, an unexpectedly complex examination of the imperfections and virtues present within everyone.

The Crossley Baby, Carey's third effort, never becomes the novel of courtroom anguish and tearful reconciliations it threatens to be. What would in the pens of lesser writers be the lynchpin of the drama Carey wisely situates in the background, allowing her prominent flair for authentic-feeling characters to take centre stage.

The sisters are an acute study in the vast differences in personality that can be found within the same family context. Jean, as close to an antagonist as Carey provides, is a cooly efficient businesswoman, valuing commerce and financial success above her personal attachments, and believing "it was not cost-effective for a person like her to wait in line at Toys "R" Us."

Sunny, by contrast, is a warm, loving mother, an intelligent woman who married for love, and harbors reserves of strength unbeknownst to her. Bridget, the mother of the "turkey-baster daughter," is a figure of mystery to both remaining women, a willowy flower-child type whose offbeat comments and unusual lifestyle stymie the surviving sisters.

Carey takes great pains to present each sister as an amalgam of both their personal views and the perceptions of others. Sunny sees the brittle Jean as vain and shallow, a person who earns "reward for behavior of no benefit to the world." Conversely, Jean despises what she views as Sunny's waste of her life, a beautiful woman who could have easily settled for any of her numerous rich suitors, but instead opted for domestic prison.

Carey gently intertwines the sisters with philosophically larger issues of race and class. She masterfully switches gears throughout the narrative, parallelling Jean's high-prices world of corporate headhunters with Sunny and her husband Leon's landlord duties managing tenement buildings in Harlem.

It is Carey's peppery wit, her precise and engaging observations which propel the characters beyond their stereotypical 'super-women' underpinnings. She has a sharp ear for nuance, Jean and Sunny always responding to strife in startling yet intensely convincing techniques. A reader may choose sides, but Carey is careful not to judge.

Jean is almost preposterously unprepared for sudden motherhood, yet Carey refuses to let her predicament devolve into broad farce. Jean is nothing if not a survivor, even if she may never understand the appeal of raising a child.

The Crossley Baby (a deliberately misleading title) ends on a surprising note, a conclusion at once unconventional and yet perfectly in tune with the characters. Nobody wins. Accommodations are made. Jacqueline Carey has provided an exceptional story, a family novel that constantly ambushes the reader with lyrical insight and brittle humour.

Rating:
Summary: Oh Dear Lord
Review: That's all I can say.

Well, maybe not all. Talk about a stupid book.