Gwendolen Gross

This is the story of two women, two mothers. Thea lives in the house where she grew up and is the stay-at-home mom of 3 kids, including a toddler. Amanda, a children's book editor, moves in next door, pregnant, about to start her maternity leave. When circumstances force the two women uncomfortably close, each must face her own choices to stay home or continue to work.

The best thing about this book is that Gross alternates chapters between Thea and Amanda, allowing the reader to get both show more sides of the story. To each mother, the other is a monster, but both have moments of being able to put themselves in the other's shoes.

The worst thing about this book is that Gross chooses to use the events of September, 2001 to bring her story to a close. The story starts in September, 2000 when Amanda moves in to her new house. The book is divided into sections by the months that follow, with no mention of year, until the following September when the inclusion of 2001 is glaring and obvious. Without going into detail, Gross gets her characters home safely and ends her story quite abruptly.

Gross's decision to use September 11th in this way is a shame because up until the last section this was a very engaging book. I cared about the characters and wanted them to be friends or at least come to terms separately with their own decisions. But it feels as though Gross could not figure out how to make that happen and decided to take the easy way out. show less

Triplets Odette, Olivia and Clementine are at major crossroads in their lives when their father abandons them and their mother. Odette and Olivia are identical twins and Clementine seems to be just another sister except that she was born at the same time. Odette and Olivia, both doctors like their pediatric neurosurgeon father are also pregnant at the same time while Clementine is struggling to get in to veterinarian school when she moves back home while waiting for her acceptance letter. show more One day, her father doesn't show up for his hospital rounds and completely vanishes. Clementine imagines all sorts of nasty things happening to him but even Clementine can't imagine the truth or the reason for his disappearance until it comes to light when Olivia receives an telephone call from their father explaining everything.

The story weaves back and forth between Clementine's youth, her father's rise to power and wealth and her current romantic life with a man who truly loves her, Eli. Clem is such an interesting character. She is not bombastic, tells things with a bit of snark, a little drama and dead pan delivery that is a bit world weary. The writing is just how I like it: quick, not overly descriptive and with smart dialogue. To read through Clem's history, her relationship with her mother and sisters is just a wonderful slice of life and very believable. I loved her mother's non-response to her husband's vanishing act. She simply moved on and encouraged her daughters to do the same. The real twist is when the full story comes out and Clem finds her own match in life beyond her twin sisters to whom she never really felt a part of. Sorry, I am being good, and you will just have to read the book to find out what happens with Clem and her family. The story reminded me a bit of Lisa Lutz and Jonathan Tropper in how the story unfolds and the little familial quirks that are displayed. show less

I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be posting stuff here, what with the sale to Amazon, but until I decide where I'm going I might as well continue.

In brief: US postgrad Annabel Mendelssohn, still in grief over the drowning death (possibly suicide, possibly just accident) of her marine-biologist elder brother Robert, goes to Australia to study spectacled fruit bats for her doctoral thesis, and, in a more-or-less platonic fashion, becomes fond of the man supervising the group of show more students, the scatterbrained Professor John Goode. When he goes missing, at first no one thinks too much of it; he's done this sort of thing often enough before, always turning up after a few days safe and sound. Annabel goes off into the forest to study her colony of bats; when, however, anti-environmentalist loggers try to destroy the colony, Annabel returns to civilization to discover Goode is still missing. The main thread of the story becomes Annabel's hunt alongside the professor's son, Leon, for the lost man, the two of them falling in love as they search.

It's been at least a year or two since I last enjoyed a novel as much as I did this one: beautifully written and paced, it drew me in from the start and thereafter let me go only with great reluctance when things like work and sleep demanded. The wilderness descriptions were wonderfully evocative, and even more so the depictions of bat behaviour; but it was the characters -- including Annabel's elder, somewhat motherly married sibling Alice, fretting from suburban Connecticut over the fate of her little sister in distant Oz -- that really pulled me along. The tale itself has many of the characteristics of a scientific investigation; Annabel and Leon set off in search of one thing but, perfectly satisfyingly, discover another instead, just as so often happens in research. It evokes, too, the feel of science and scientific communities. Coupling these traits with the ecological/ethological setting, what we have is a book that could be fitted into that very small subcategory of science fiction that concerns itself with working scientists; it doesn't have the wacky skiffy ideas of something like Gregory Benford's Timescape, but it shares with that core sf novel the realistic portrayal of scientists as real, ordinary, often flawed people engaged simultaneously in science and everyday life. show less

Going into this, I didn't really have any expectations, but was hesitantly hopeful it might be interesting. I really didn't know anything about it, except that the triplet thing. I am happy to report that The Orphan Sister was about so much more than that. This story grabbed me from page one and I devoured it whole, the funny, the sweet, the romantic, the depressing and even the scenes about babies (which for me is saying something).

Clem has such a real voice that you really feel like you're show more getting to know her. She is intelligent and angry, broken and hopeful. There are so many facets to who she is and her problems feel like real life problems. Her hangups about being left out while also being afraid of the current balance falling apart are so illogical and lifelike. Of course, who doesn't like a heroine who has a veritable menagerie of creatures: two dogs, a ferret and a snake (a five foot boa constrictor).

The triplet/twin themes are used to explore concepts of individuality and identity. Are the twins stronger because they have each other or is Clem stronger because she's naturally more independent? The twin way of communicating was also completely fascinating. I wonder if people really do that, and suspect they might, which makes me wonder just what the human brain is capable of...

The other main aspects of the story deal with romantic relationships, that of Clem's mother and father, as well as Clem's love life. The former's resolution I did not find entirely satisfying exactly, but it was unsatisfying in a true to life way; everything does not always have a really good ending. Clem's love life involves a lot of grief, since her first, powerful love died while they were both still in college (where they met). This incapacitated her for a long while, but, even after recovering, it's hard to get over someone you never had a chance to encounter real life with.

This book was so beautiful and moving and was just perfect for what I wanted to read right now, even though I didn't realize that going in. Maybe I should be reading a bit more adult fiction; I've gotten so caught up in YA that I'd forgotten how great it can be. show less