I forgot why I put this book on hold, so I didn't know anything about the story when I started reading it. It took a turn I did *not* expect, but when I finally read the book jacket it's right there! Maybe I will stop reading book jackets altogether because I enjoyed being surprised. Anyway, it turns out the publisher doesn't consider it a spoiler to say this is a book about a white woman adopting a black baby.

I got another surprise when I got to the author photo. I'd (wrongly) assumed the author was female, but no. How interesting for a black, gay man to write a book from the perspective of a white, straight woman. In an interview with Rumpus, Alam said, "If you’re gonna write across the lines of gender, or across the lines of race—it’s not that that practice is impossible, or that it should be forbidden—it should be done thoughtfully."

There are so many interesting things going on in this book. Rebecca Stone is not a stereotype of a privileged white woman, but through her I see so many stereotypical white-woman traits. She is so well meaning, but her understanding can be so shallow. She is so optimistic and it's both sweet and ridiculous and frustrating. Her experience of motherhood's challenges -- this is where the book hit home for me. Motherhood is hella fraught.

The best thing I can say about a book is that I would read it again. And I think I'd read this again. ( )

The most interesting thing about this book was when I realised that the author was a male.

I wanted to like this more; however, it's a 300 page book and it took me seven days to get through it. Yes, I've been busy, but still, it should have taken me three max but it just honestly wasn't very interesting, and I feel like I was promised a lot of things I didn't get. This promises to deal with race and privilege, but really, I feel like Cheryl was the only character in the book that actually did something and called out how uncomfortable situations can be. (And how I loved Cheryl and her bluntness!) Though short, this kind of meandered around what could have been poignant.

The poetry aspect of Rebecca's life was interesting, but ultimately kind of irrelevant in the face of her self-worth. And then the ending just kind of left my eyebrows raised. Where did it come from? What note was I supposed to be left on?

I guess I just wanted this to be a lot more because it had a premise that really promised to make me understand the world a little more. But I think I'm just more aware of how blinding white privilege can be. ( )

Boring. Did not hold my interest. ( )

Depressing ( )

I have no idea what I read (?) or listened to in this case. The book is beautifully written and would possibly work better in reading than listening. In my opinion though, it tried to tackle too many themes and dealt with them in broad strokes without cutting to the essence of any. There are the subjects of motherhood, the families we are born into and those we create, the breakdown of marriage, and the differences between white privilege and black survival. Mostly, however, it is about one privileged woman who did not sufficiently address or question her privileges.

The story starts with Rebecca giving birth to her son Jacob. She is overwhelmed by new motherhood, and finds it hard to cope, she enlists the help of Priscilla, the lactation consultants, and asks her to become her nanny. They build a symbiotic relationship, but while Priscilla only benefited from the Rebecca Stone financially, Rebecca thought that the nanny's presence helped her cope, accept and enjoy motherhood. When Priscilla becomes pregnant then dies shortly after childbirth, Rebecca adopts baby Andrew.

It was hard for me to understand how a mother who talked about throwing her own child from the window found it so easy to adopt a child not of her own flesh. So while she dealt with her own child as a spoiled rich girl, she brought up the child of another woman as her own, and this time she did it herself, finally becoming a full-time mother to her own child as well. Rebecca is a poet, has a touch of the spoiled rich girl about her. It is interesting that at the beginning of the story, and several times throughout she link herself to Princess Diana, another privileged white woman with a highly public yet emotionally vacuous lifestyle.
Near the end of the book there is an imagined dialogue Rebecca has with the princess, and wonders whether her kindness and charity, her sympathy for children who lost limbs to mines, or AIDS patient was only for the cameras. Perhaps Rebecca did question whether it was the same with her, adopting this baby, although she was always sensitive against those who praised her charity and heroism adopting a black child.

I am not a great fan of poetry, or perhaps I did not read good poetry. In the book Rebecca says that poetry is as much about the reader as it is about the written text. It is open-ended to the point that it resonates with what you already have inside you (I am not sure I am quoting her any passage of the book or paraphrasing my own understanding in light of what I have read). In this respect the book comes across to me like a piece of poetry that I did not understand, because it did not resonate with what I have inside. I am a mother myself but I accepted motherhood readily and instantly, and I do not understand how long it took Rebecca to embrace motherhood and weave it into her life and craft as a poet. I could not help think also that she lived life within her own head, as poets and writers do. Her idealism and optimism will be hard to stick to in the current social and political climate. The book ends prior to the current Trump era, and I daresay that if a sequel was to be written in the current time, it will only show that her belief in raising her black son and white son as equals was unrealistic. The omens of doom for the black son are already there in this volume.

Postscript: After writing this review I found out that the author is male. I am now wondering whether the dissonance I felt was because of this biological fact that removes him from the actual experience of motherhood. It is commendable how he unflinchingly dealt with aspects of labour and childbirth, breastfeeding and child-rearing, but there is something missing there that aludes me. Motherhood, after all, is more than the sum of its painful and unsightly parts, and more than its daily drudgery. ( )