3 Stars
Karen
Neulander is a single mother with Stage 4 ovarian cancer with perhaps two years
left to live. She writes a book for her
six-year-old son Jacob, the book we are reading but which is intended for Jacob
when he is older. At Jacob’s request,
Karen contacts his biological father Dave whose desire not to have children led
to Karen’s breakup with him. Karen has
to deal with her mortality and her fears about what will happen to her son once
she dies.
The
structural framework of the novel is awkward.
Karen writes the book because “It seems like the right way to tell you
everything I want you to know.” She also
clarifies that she will include “whatever wisdom I have, whatever lessons I’d
pass on to you later . . . [and] my hope is that whenever you miss me or
whenever you just want to know more about the person I was, you’ll be able to
open this book and read these pages and remember me.” Would a mother really keep describing her
extreme physical pain? Why would she
include such details about her job as a political consultant and her major
client at the moment? Though the book
shows a growth/change in Karen’s thinking, why would she want to show her son
the events that led to her epiphany? Since
Karen writes a day-by-day account of events, a diary or journal format would be
more appropriate.
Karen is
not a likeable character. In her professional
life, as she admits, she has no qualms about using “dirty tricks” to smear an
opponent’s reputation and whitewash her client’s scandals. She describes her current client as “one of
the least trustworthy people I’d ever met” yet she never considers dropping him. She is very self-centred as well though,
given her circumstances, her selfishness is totally understandable. At times, her only redeeming quality is her
love for her son. Were it not for her terminal cancer diagnosis,
it would be difficult to have much sympathy for her.
Karen’s
character change is convincing. Her
fierce love for her son makes her capable of change and she has sufficient
motivation to do so within the duration of the novel. Dave’s change is less realistic. He seems so very different from how Karen
describes him. Not only is he handsome
and wealthy with a supportive wife, he seems totally reformed. His lack of experience means he makes
mistakes as a father, but he is so well-meaning and tries so hard to be a good
father. He just seems too good to be
true.
Of course,
there is the spectre of unreliability in Karen’s narration. At the beginning of the book, she states, “I
plan to be honest here. I plan to be
excruciatingly, extraordinarily honest.
I will not edit out the truth; I will not try to make myself look better
than I really was. Than I really am.” But does she really portray Dave as he was or
have her emotions negatively coloured her portrayal? At one point, she writes to Jacob that, “Your
father was remembering what he wanted to remember in order to make himself feel
better.” Is the same not true for
her? And again, is it fitting that in
her book to her son, Karen writes things like “no matter what else he turned
out to be in life your father was also, indubitably, a moron” and “He was
lying; your father was a liar”?
The novel
examines parental love. What does it
mean to really love a child?
Unfortunately, Karen’s realization is expected so the ending is predictable;
in fact, much of the book feels like waiting for Karen to finally see the
light.
The book is
written in a conversational, informal style which makes it easy to read. It is insightful in some respects but its
unwieldy framework detracts from the whole.
Note: I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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