Somebody Else's Daughter

This is a dark, disturbing novel that was difficult to put down. I thought Brundage tackled some heavy issues in her debut novel, The Doctor's Wife, but she took on an even more massive load in Somebody Else's Daughter. Adoption, alcoholism, drug addiction, pornography, sexual abuse, murder, AIDS, prostitution, adultery. Thanks to Brundage's skill as an author, there is a lot going on, but it doesn't overwhelm. She slowly weaves together seemingly disparate story lines and characters in a masterful way that never fails to leave me in awe of her talent as a storyteller.

What I love about Brundage is how she sets up her story. She takes her time, slowly creating a sense of place and developing her characters superbly. All of this is imbued show more with a subtle, underlying sense of suspense. I find myself reading her opening chapters with relish, knowing that she is building, gradually and deliberately, a gripping crescendo.

A distinct difference between this novel and Brundage's debut, for me, was the likability of the characters. Though The Doctor's Wife held me in its grip, I struggled to truly like any of the characters, despite the fact that they were extremely well-developed. Reading Somebody Else's Daughter, I found it easy to love several characters. Willa was conflicted and sensitive, spurning many of the elitist attitudes she had been raised in the midst of. Several of the characters - Willa's adoptive parents, Claire the feminist sculptor, Claire's pot-smoking son Teddy - were flawed but basically, in the end, good people. And Willa's biological father, Nate, well, I kind of fell in love with him ... a struggling writer with a past, he was handsome, passionate, wise, and sensitive - a perfect hero. show less

As she did in The Doctor's Wife, Elizabeth Brundage has once again given us a compulsively readable, compelling story of the complicated secrets that lurk beneath the idyllic surface of small town life. Somebody Else's Daughter examines the interconnected lives of students and parents at an exclusive private school in the Berkshires, in the process exploring important subjects like adoptive parenting, drug use, and our fractured expectations for and treatment of women. Her writing is lovely and her characters ring true, and, like with the best of literature, the story here grabs the reader and never lets go. Somebody Else's Mother is one of the most satisfying books I have read this year

This novel makes a promising start -- the insular community of a private school faculty begins showing cracks when a long-absent resident returns home, and a new writing instructor comes to the faculty. Old secrets surface, and the rot beneath the shiny surface begins to bubble up.

Unfortunately, this fine beginning devolves into melodrama, coincidence piled upon coincidence, and totally unbelievable decisions are made by some of the characters. By the time it's all over, the thing feels like a Hallmark Movie gone south.

I'd kind of have to compare this book to a train wreck -- lots of bad stuff going on, but I had to keep reading to find out how it ended (that & the fact that I was reading it for book club). I went into this novel expecting a story about a teenage girl, adopted at birth, who somewhat purposefully accidentally ends up in her birth father's high school classroom -- this based on the description on the back of the book. But that really doesn't describe this novel at all. There are so many things going on in this story with a number of characters (most of them bad) that it makes it difficult to really figure out what the storyline is supposed to be. Not only did some aspects seemed farfetched, but none of the characters (with the exception show more of maybe one) were particularly likeable. There was infidelity, pornography, drugs, murder, animal cruelty....basically too much for one novel. It's as if Brundage tried to come up with as many despicable characters & actions as she could, and then she tried to put them all in one book. But it just seemed way too dysfunctional. Had she picked a couple of these things & perhaps written a story based on that, this may have been more palatable. show less

This novel is chock full of a lot of distasteful stuff but you can't look away! Well-drawn characters and a great plot keep it moving along and at times you can't put it down. An unexpectedly good read.

This book has a gripping, emotional beginning. The framework surrounding Willa's birth and Nate's younger years provides the necessary foundation for the remainder of the book. However, the majority of the book was somewhat flat compared to the start of it. The plot had so many twists and the characters had so many flaws it made the story seem more improbable than it could have if the author had focused on fewer of the flaws, but in a deeper, more probing way. The events unfolding in Willa's life late in the book seemed too predictable. I really didn't care for the book overall.

When Nate was young, he lived as a junkie in San Francisco with his partner Cat and their small daughter Willa. When Cat’s AIDS begins to kill her in earnest, she decides they will have to give Willa up for adoption.

Fast forward to Willa’s high school years. Nate has cleaned up and misses his daughter, so he decides to teach at her school without telling anyone of his connection to her.

I expected Nate to be the narrator of the book, perhaps Willa and her parents as well. Instead, Brundage has a broad range of narrators, including Claire and her son Teddy who have recently returned to the area, Willa and her parents, and the wife of the headmaster of the school. At times this method seemed somewhat over ambitious, like the story show more could have been crisper if it wasn’t dealing with everyone in the community’s intensely screwed-up lives. However, by the end of the book, I realized that Brundage was bringing all the storylines into a cohesive ending that really worked.

It definitely took me awhile to get into “Somebody Else’s Daughter,” but once I did i was very pleased with the way the story was told. show less