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The Godmother by Carrie Adams
Aug. 2nd, 2008 10:15 pmToday while at Border's (not finding anything I actually set out to get) I picked up two books pretty much randomly from the by one get one half off table. The first one I read, a novel by Carrie Adams, was The Godmother.
The premise of the story is pretty simple: a single, thirty-something career woman who wants nothing more than to be married with kids and her trials and tribulations with her godchildren (she has four) and their families. It's the "trials and tribulations" part that made the story complicated.
As soon as I started reading I tore through the chapters. I devoured each one, gleefully laughing with her and mournfully crying for her. I couldn't put it down, Tessa King was bright and interesting, selfish as hell but unable to see it, and her life was spinning out of control. And she was taking her friends down with it.
I made it through three fourths of the book in about three hours. I would have continued on until the end if it there hadn't been the cry for dinner. So I left the book where I was and the story had time to percolate within my brain for the better part of three hours. (Odd coincidence, but there you go.) And when we got back, I immediately picked it up and continued on.
I don't know if it's because I had time to think about it or if the last quarter of the book just wasn't as well written as the first three, but it was much much slower going after that. Suddenly, I found I didn't like the characters as much as I thought (there were a lot to try to keep track of...four couples, a couple beaus, a bunch of children, a single mom, a single party-only friend, and various family members). There were a lot of tragedies going on that were hard to keep track of too: Fran's infidelity; Cora's ongoing health problems; Al and Claudia's infertility issues; Helen and Neil's marriage problems; Casper's teenage issues...the list goes on and on.
Though the story line was complicated, it wasn't unpredictable which is unfortunate. Unpredictability would have made the latter portion of this novel a much more interesting read. I saw Helen's actions coming from the moment she and subsequently her husband and children were introduced despite the Tessa's own ignorance to the desperation that Helen showed. Also, for a lawyer, Tessa wasn't exactly brilliant - or inquisitive, which I thought would have been a good attribute for a lawyer.
The four couples that she was friends with were absolutely necessary for the plot of the novel as they had for the most part what she thought she wanted. Billy, the single mom, was almost entirely superfluous, as was her daughter and Tessa's goddaughter, Cora. You could make the case that she was there to show Tessa what it was like to be a single mom which is important in that tricky last part of the novel, but it felt like she was an afterthought for the author and thus an afterthought for Tessa. I think this novel would have been well served if she hadn't been there or if her part had been altered to a bit part.
Another thing I didn't really like about the end of the novel was how preachy it became.
"Marriage is hard, it takes work, don't do drugs, single life is hard," etc. etc. etc. It felt like one long winded sermon at the end of it which I did not appreciate.
Maybe if I hadn't been taken away from that world for a few hours I could have sailed through to the end with little problem with how it ended. Maybe I wouldn't have liked it either way. Maybe maybe maybe. I don't know. I do recommend giving this one a try if you happen to see it your local library or can pick it up cheap - I wouldn't recommend paying full price for it. Since this is a debut novel, I think we can expect better things from her in the future. The excerpt of her next novel, The Stepmother, was intriguing, but it looked like it was going to cover much of the same ground this novel did just from a different angle. We'll see.
The premise of the story is pretty simple: a single, thirty-something career woman who wants nothing more than to be married with kids and her trials and tribulations with her godchildren (she has four) and their families. It's the "trials and tribulations" part that made the story complicated.
As soon as I started reading I tore through the chapters. I devoured each one, gleefully laughing with her and mournfully crying for her. I couldn't put it down, Tessa King was bright and interesting, selfish as hell but unable to see it, and her life was spinning out of control. And she was taking her friends down with it.
I made it through three fourths of the book in about three hours. I would have continued on until the end if it there hadn't been the cry for dinner. So I left the book where I was and the story had time to percolate within my brain for the better part of three hours. (Odd coincidence, but there you go.) And when we got back, I immediately picked it up and continued on.
I don't know if it's because I had time to think about it or if the last quarter of the book just wasn't as well written as the first three, but it was much much slower going after that. Suddenly, I found I didn't like the characters as much as I thought (there were a lot to try to keep track of...four couples, a couple beaus, a bunch of children, a single mom, a single party-only friend, and various family members). There were a lot of tragedies going on that were hard to keep track of too: Fran's infidelity; Cora's ongoing health problems; Al and Claudia's infertility issues; Helen and Neil's marriage problems; Casper's teenage issues...the list goes on and on.
Though the story line was complicated, it wasn't unpredictable which is unfortunate. Unpredictability would have made the latter portion of this novel a much more interesting read. I saw Helen's actions coming from the moment she and subsequently her husband and children were introduced despite the Tessa's own ignorance to the desperation that Helen showed. Also, for a lawyer, Tessa wasn't exactly brilliant - or inquisitive, which I thought would have been a good attribute for a lawyer.
The four couples that she was friends with were absolutely necessary for the plot of the novel as they had for the most part what she thought she wanted. Billy, the single mom, was almost entirely superfluous, as was her daughter and Tessa's goddaughter, Cora. You could make the case that she was there to show Tessa what it was like to be a single mom which is important in that tricky last part of the novel, but it felt like she was an afterthought for the author and thus an afterthought for Tessa. I think this novel would have been well served if she hadn't been there or if her part had been altered to a bit part.
Another thing I didn't really like about the end of the novel was how preachy it became.
"Marriage is hard, it takes work, don't do drugs, single life is hard," etc. etc. etc. It felt like one long winded sermon at the end of it which I did not appreciate.
Maybe if I hadn't been taken away from that world for a few hours I could have sailed through to the end with little problem with how it ended. Maybe I wouldn't have liked it either way. Maybe maybe maybe. I don't know. I do recommend giving this one a try if you happen to see it your local library or can pick it up cheap - I wouldn't recommend paying full price for it. Since this is a debut novel, I think we can expect better things from her in the future. The excerpt of her next novel, The Stepmother, was intriguing, but it looked like it was going to cover much of the same ground this novel did just from a different angle. We'll see.
