Not the best by far | Girls in Trouble: A Novel

great book...unable to put it down | Girls in Trouble: A Novel | Caroline Leavitt

books:


	• Girls in Trouble: A Novel Caroline Leavitt St. Martin's Griffin, 2005 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 92 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Exploring the Perils of Open Adoption

This novel started out kind of like an "after-school special" showing the tragic results of teenage sex, but as I continued to read, the characters became more dimensional and I began to see that there is much more to this novel than I originally believed. The author takes the time to fully develop the characters so that you understood where their decisions are coming from.

This is the story of Sara, sixteen and pregnant and the novel opens on the drive to the hospital to have her baby. She is attended by her parents but her thoughts are only of the adoptive parents to whom she has promised her child. Sara feels as though no one understands her and the only person she thought she could truly trust was Danny, the baby's teenaged father, but after telling him of the impending birth, Danny leaves town and abandons Sara. She would love to keep her baby and raise it, but she also wants her child to have the best - so she decides upon an open-adoption, in which she will be able to be a part of the child's life.

She chooses Eva & George, a friendly older couple and instantly bonds with Eva, who has always wanted to become a mother. Sara feels she is more a part of her family than she is in her own. Her parents are disappointed in her and want Sara to put the baby up for adoption and just move on with her life, but Sara won't listen and forges a strong bond with the adoptive family.

Then things get too close for comfort and the relationship becomes strained as Sara becomes too close to the family in an unhealthy way. Then Sara does something that ultimately breaks the strong connection with Eva & George and she feels the bond with her baby break, perhaps permanently.

I particularly enjoyed reading the story from the characters different perspectives and getting know the reason why Danny ran away. We even learn the story from the baby's perspective. As she grows, Anne, like Sara, has never really felt connected to her adoptive parents and when she gets the chance to meet Sara, she thinks that her prayers have been answered by being reunited with her birth mother, but events happen that once again, tear Sara and her daughter apart.

Caroline Leavitt does an excellent job introducing each character and drawing you into their lives. The interaction between the characters is gripping and the story is well told - I will certainly look for more books by this author and I highly recommend this story.

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Not the best by far

I am at a loss by the great reviews for this book? What am I missing? The writing is amateurish. I did not feel for the birth mother or the adoptive parents and I really did not care what happened to any of them. It dragged on and on with no real meaning or feeling. This is just words and more words. I kept thinking of plot lines that would have made this novel great and hoping they would happen but they never appeared. This is just not worth the hype of the good reviews.

great book...unable to put it down

I have started reading even though I am not done with this yet, I love the book. I have not been able to put it down. It gets good right from the start of the first paragraph.

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A Veteran and Seasoned Author

My bookclub read this book and we all admired and loved it so much!. This very crafted and luminous prose, modest and understated. Leavitt, a veteran author of over eight novels, has won deserved praise.The writing profession needs more of Leavitt's graceful, adept prose, her unfailing humanity (which she brings to every story and character she writes) and her emotional depth. Her craft is seamless, --I could go and on, but I certainly hope others will grab a copy of this moving, very human book and savor it as I did.

I sobbed for the last hour.... A GREAT book, A MUST read

I found "Girls in Trouble" a compulsive read and a tear jerker AND highly literate. As an adoptive mom maybe I was overly emotional, but this story, as many have said, IS a page turner. I read the hard cover and couldn't believe I hadn't read it earlier, now in paperback.

Here's what is great about this book: The well-rounded unique characters, the atypical adoption story, the way everyone here is capable of transformation, the way the adoptive parents fumble-- understandably; the two "girls" at the center: Sara and Anne. It's probably true that few mother-daughter reunions are this utterly amazing, for both, but mainly Caroline Leavitt makes every twist of the plot: more than real. We have tragedy and comedy, great writing, and a happy ending (sorry, spoiler).

So why did I lose two nights of sleep over this book. Because Leavitt knows how to move a plot forward as if seamlessly. Because the language, though easy to read, is gorgeous. Here's a tiny example is not only true but captures the real sub-text:

p 231: "People had it so wrong about missing. "It's like a pie," her mother once told her. "The pie is your whole life, the pieces are pain, and after a while, each piece gets smaller and smaller, and then you have your whole life back." Her mother was so wrong. Maybe the pieces grew smaller, but your hunger for them didn't, it was always there, real and immediate, like breathing, necessary and something you couldn't control or stop, even if you wanted to. And like a pie, your past was something you were always hungry for."

What is so wonderful about this novel is that most of the many characters spout homilies about how good life will be. But for virtually everyone here, that is a lie, and the lie is what Leavitt shows. Pain doesn't stop until there is truth and redemption. That the characters, who leap off the page more real than real people you know-- all have to learn the above lession, and each in his or her way do, which is why I love this novel. Everyone, despite earlier rigigites sp?, eventually, and beautifully, come around.

Lies hurt. Pain is only cured by truth and magnanimity. These emotions are scarse in life, but abundant in "Girls In Trouble." Which is why reading this, on Yom Kippur no less, made me feel a renewed devotion not to lie and to see the world from others' point of view. There is one graph ONE that I thought was a tad off. ONE GRAPH in a novel 356 pages long. How many novels are this good? Very few. Leavitt in this book, one of many she has written, is up there with Sue Miller and Carole Shields, a natural story teller. Read it and see if you find that one graph, because even that is so well written I bet you won't find it. Everything here leaps off the page as absolutely REAL.

5 stars, highly recommend!! Thank you, Caroline Leavitt. A great book is a real gift and now that I've finished just twenty minutes ago, what I feel is grief. I, like another reviewer, would love Leavitt to have a sequel, long into the future or not so long. This books just begs for a second novel. It's THAT good. It's actually GREAT. I read a whole heap of books every week, but rarely am I as sad for a novel to end.

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In this heart-wrenching story of an open adoption gone wrong, Caroline Leavitt reveals the astonishing power of family bonds and maternal love. Sara, sixteen, is in denial about her pregnancy and too far along for an abortion. Her once-devoted boyfriend has disappeared so Sara decides her only option is an open adoption with George and Eva, a couple desperate for a child. After the birth it's clear Sara has a bond with the child that Eva can't duplicate and Eva and George make a drastic decision, with devastating consequences for them all.