Elizabeth Brundage

Having grown up in a privileged environment, private school student Willa witnesses the tragic collision between the private difficulties of her biological and adoptive families, a situation that is further challenged by the indiscretions of her headmaster and a feminist sculptor's reckless affair. 60,000 first printing.

Somebody Else's Daughter

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I'm a little conflicted about this book and debated between 2 stars and 3. The prose is very well-crafted but at times, it felt a bit overdone. The author uses a lot of metaphors and imagery-rich language and there were times when I would have liked to strip some of it out and just get to the point of the scene or passage.

I thought this would be a story of a reformed drug addict's quest to know the daughter he gave up for adoption as an infant and his journey to make peace with that decision and to reconcile his past self with his current self. However, as I read, the theme of society's disregard for women and their consequent victimization started to emerge and I felt a bit like that theme was snuck in on the reader without really being fully explored. I also felt that the character of Jack Heath was one of the more interesting in the book but (trying for no spoilers here), but I didn't feel that last-minute change in his character rang true.

The book explores drug abuse and addiction, prostitution, pornography, adoption, domestic and sexual sbuse, animal abuse, self-identity issues, eating disorders, family dysfunction, and of course, the victimization and objectification of women. That is a ton of things to include in one story which I believe resulted in the superficial exploration and treatment of many of those issues. I think the author tried to cram too much into one novel.

Somebody Else's Daughter

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