Rating: 
Summary: The ripples of adoption
Review: British author Trollope writes sharp-witted novels of middle-class families in domestic crisis. Her characters are too complex to be entirely likable - or dislikable, and her plots test their inner resources and shake cherished modes of thinking.Adoption and the search for birth parents provide the catalysts for change and upheaval in "Brother and Sister." Nathalie has always proclaimed that her biological origins are of no interest to her; that being chosen by your parents is better than just being born to them. But when her 5-year-old daughter, Polly, is diagnosed with a minor, but hereditary ear abnormality, Nathalie is jolted. Nathalie has always exuded confidence (though she flits from job to job) and insisted on her independence, to the point of refusing to marry her live-in partner and the father of her child, Steve. But is her vaunted independence just an inability to commit herself? " 'I just felt awful, lost,' " she tells Steve, that night. " 'I thought - I thought, what else don't I know?' .... 'I suddenly felt I was in a space. A void.' " The person she turns to in this moment of crisis is her adopted brother, David, the only one who will "understand," since he, too, is adopted. But David is appalled, and dead set against upsetting everyone and everything "good." " 'I need to,' " Nathalie insists. " 'I need to stop being this person of my own creation and find out what really happened. I need to stop feeling so separate.' " And Nathalie needs more. The big sister, who has always gotten her way, she needs David to join her in the search; to find his own mother while she finds hers. David at first resists - the idea terrifies him. But then, with the urging of his wife, Marnie, he relents. David, happily married, father of three, owner of a thriving landscape business, values stability. His avocation is chess and as the novel proceeds we see that in times of stress he loses himself in the game. To him it's a haven of intellectual challenge with identifiable rules, far from the mess and unpredictability of emotional ructions. And the brother and sister quest causes nothing but emotional ructions. The adoptive grandmother fears being supplanted by these alien "real" grandmothers. She fears being supplanted as a mother, her life nullified. Steve and Marnie feel left out, rejected. The bond between the adopted siblings has always been threatening - their closeness not only that of siblings, but of adoptees, willing to declare that no one but the other can understand their points of view. And, of course, they are not blood relations. Steve and Marnie bring their own characters to bear on the situation. Steve, a successful designer with his own firm, likes everything in its place. He reigns in his passion for control at home, but it costs him. Nathalie's separateness eats at him - he needs to feel needed. Marnie, giving up her nursery school after the birth of her third child, feels her own control unraveling. Trying to run her family on the same sound principles as she ran the school, her two-year-old son defeats her and her husband turns to chess more urgently than to her. Trollope stays in the third person, but she shifts point of view among her characters, including the two birth mothers, who are as interesting as they are different. The children - antennae quivering as tensions increase in their families, the way they glean knowledge that adults attempt to hide, their insecurities and fierce need for stability - gain the reader's complete sympathy, while each of the adults needs a good shaking from time to time. All of the characters are changed by the events, but Trollope never does anything so easy as catharsis. Life goes on, people cope, most of them try to do the right thing, as they know it. A satisfying and absorbing exploration of an intriguing subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Did Not Ring True to Me
Review: I am an adoptee, and I have to say that I found this book far off the mark of my experience. Nothing rang true to me in this book except Cora's loss at the substitution of her baby for the real woman who was her daughter. I recently went through my own search and reunion with my birthmother and my mother, my husband and my son could not have been more supportive and interested in my journey. And they shared in it all the way. My new found siblings were also welcoming and loving at a very difficult time. My sister went through her own journey ten years ago and her experience also could not have been more different than the characters in this book. I found most of the characters and their angst totally unrealistic. The author obviously knows nothing of the real adoption, search and reunion experience except from reading about it from these pseudo-experts and their jargon about the "primal scream" of adoptees when they are ripped from their biological mothers at birth. Total bunk. If you are an adoptee don't read this book, and especially don't read it if you ever plan to search for your birth parents. For those who have never gone through the experience, read it, but with a suspension of disbelief, because it is far from the real experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Important
Review: If you or a person close to you is adopted this book may assist in understanding how difficult it can be. The story explores the emotions of not only the adopted child and adoptive mother but that of family, work colleagues and the biological mother. My question is why is the mother always the focal point in this book?
Rating:
Summary: "The abandoned baby lives inside each adoptee."
Review: In this tension-filled domestic drama, Joanna Trollope shows how the adoption of two children, now adults, have affected all the families involved--the birth mothers and their later families, the adoptive parents and grandparents, and the adoptees themselves, their spouses, and their children. Nathalie, the partner of Steve Ross and mother of their child, has always considered it an advantage to be adopted, to be "chosen," but when her young daughter Polly needs surgery for a condition that may be inherited, her own adoption becomes an issue for her. Asking "What else don't I know about where Polly's come from?" she suddenly comes to a life-changing realization: "I want to be like people who know where they come from." She and her brother David decide to search for their birth mothers. The rippling effects of the decision to search for birth mothers dominate this carefully constructed novel. Nathalie's adoptive mother, not surprisingly, is devastated that both of "her" children need to find "other" mothers. The birth mothers, by turn, have created new lives of their own, each dealing with her "lost" child in her own way. Nathalie's husband, David's wife, and their children are also affected, not least by the fact that Nathalie and David choose to share their feelings with each other, rather than with their spouses. As the ripple effects continue, other characters, even including employees, are drawn into the emotional vortex, and unexpected complications send the action in surprising directions with new twists and turns. Trollope reveals the inner lives of her characters through beautifully realized dialogue, and she pays particular attention to the details of personality and domestic relationships. The reader is quickly drawn into the action and empathizes with the characters, who seem realistic, though they are not fully developed. In fact, we learn about each one only what is necessary for the author to illustrate the myriad effects of adoption on the adoptees and the people who love them. The themes dominate, controlling both the action and the characters themselves. A vivid domestic drama with an unusual subject and characters, the novel shows us how relationships are tested and tempered. Ultimately, both the characters and the reader come to a new appreciation of the complexities of love and families. Mary Whipple
Rating: 
Summary: A Major Disappointment
Review: Joanna Trollope wrote 16 books before this one, and I have read every last one with intense admiration. Some were better than others, in my view, but all were distinctive and brilliant. Brother and Sister, to this reader, was a terrible letdown. The premise is sound: Adoption and its aftermath lasts well into the adults lives of those adopted and those who gave up their children for whatever good reasons. Well and good. And when adult adoptees seek their birth parents, everyone around them is affected as much as they are. This is perfectly in line with Trollope's ongoing theme in all of her novels--that people are not islands, that the behavior of one person can affect, for ill or good, a wide circle of others. Trollope has embroidered on that theme throughout her ouvre, often brilliantly. Why, then, did this book leave me so unmoved? Perhaps because the main characters--the two adoptees, Nathalie and her adopted brother David--were so unlikeable. Perhaps because their significant others were equally unlikeable. Perhaps because not one character in the book, with the exception of two young children, meant anything to me as a reader. Nathalie is the one who begins it, who suddenly, in her 30s, feels the driving need to find her birth mother. I could relate to that--but not to the fact that she selfishly forces her brother David, who does NOT have the same need--to join her in the search and find his own roots. The book goes on and on and on and on as we learn who the birth parents are, and their stories, and see the inevitable havoc that the searches wreak upon everybody in sight. There are no happy endings, no ecstatic reunions on Oprah. Funnily enough, while reading this book, I spoke with an adoptive mother whose son had just found his birth mother, and everybody was ecstatic. I'm not saying that this should be the inevitable outcome, but I found the entire negative premise of this book to be over the top. As one of Joanna Trollope's most ardent fans, it pains me to say that, had Brother and Sister not had her name on it, I would have tossed it into the bin before finishing even half.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting journey...
Review: What happens when an adult man and woman suddenly decide to seek out their biological mothers? Joanna Trollope introduces us to a wide cast of characters in this novel, and examines the effect the main characters', siblings Nathalie and David, sudden pressing search for their biological mothers has on those who surround them. It all starts when Steve, Nathalie's common-law husband has a friend at work whose girlfriend wants to interview adult adoptees. After talking with her, Nathalie decides she wants to find out about her mother, and convinces her David, to search for his biological mother at the same time. Instead of looking at adoption just from the view of the children who were given up, Trollope skillfully shows us how Nathalie and David's children, spouses, parents, co-workers and biological mothers and their families deal with the two's hunt. These many points of view and feelings add to the great characterization. I think I will be checking out more of her work.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting journey...
Review: What happens when an adult man and woman suddenly decide to seek out their biological mothers? Joanna Trollope introduces us to a wide cast of characters in this novel, and examines the effect the main characters', siblings Nathalie and David, sudden pressing search for their biological mothers has on those who surround them. It all starts when Steve, Nathalie's common-law husband has a friend at work whose girlfriend wants to interview adult adoptees. After talking with her, Nathalie decides she wants to find out about her mother, and convinces her David, to search for his biological mother at the same time. Instead of looking at adoption just from the view of the children who were given up, Trollope skillfully shows us how Nathalie and David's children, spouses, parents, co-workers and biological mothers and their families deal with the two's hunt. These many points of view and feelings add to the great characterization. I think I will be checking out more of her work.
Rating:
Summary: My Real Parents
Review: When my daughter was little and would get angry with my wife or I, she'd often say, "I want my real parents." As a person who had adoptive grandparents, I found this subject to be fascinating. Trollope's book answers the question about just who our real parents are. If there is a lesson, what I got was that our real parents are the ones who give us love while we're growing up. The issues in the book are riveting. How our sense of family can be threatened by change and impacts each member of the group shines through. I found it particularly significant that as David and Nathalie find birth mothers Carole and Cora, the reality of these women is a shock to how they had been imagined. Equally fascinating is the dynamic within Carole's family as her husband Connor is supportive and son Martin short circuits finding that he is suddenly not the oldest of his mother's sons. The characters are all deep. However, the story does take unexpected turns that like an unwanted half brother were not entirely welcome. Nathalie's live-in boyfriend Steve's affair seemed strange to me. We are introduced to him being a stable and supportive mate who then experiences lethal doses of insecurity. The same is true for David's wife Marnie whose insecurity over David's connection to his adoptive sister Nathalie causes anxieties and odd behavior. That the search then results in the ultimate schism of the bond between brother and sister is even less welcome. Satisfying elements of the story are with the adoptive Lynne and her working through her feelings and the scene with son David where he confirms his bond with his adoptive mother. I also enjoyed the exploration into Cora's world and the social situation that brought her to give up her baby. Overall, I found this an enjoyable reading experience. The issues are weighty. It made me really picture the feelings of adopted children. I reflected on my own family and how it might be different if adoption results from the death of birth parents rather than social circumstance. Trollope's pacing and command of language are masterful. The setting of locations in Great Britain makes us feel as if we'd been there. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: My Real Parents
Review: When my daughter was little and would get angry with my wife or I, she'd often say, "I want my real parents." As a person who had adoptive grandparents, I found this subject to be fascinating. Trollope's book answers the question about just who our real parents are. If there is a lesson, what I got was that our real parents are the ones who give us love while we're growing up. The issues in the book are riveting. How our sense of family can be threatened by change and impacts each member of the group shines through. I found it particularly significant that as David and Nathalie find birth mothers Carole and Cora, the reality of these women is a shock to how they had been imagined. Equally fascinating is the dynamic within Carole's family as her husband Connor is supportive and son Martin short circuits finding that he is suddenly not the oldest of his mother's sons. The characters are all deep. However, the story does take unexpected turns that like an unwanted half brother were not entirely welcome. Nathalie's live-in boyfriend Steve's affair seemed strange to me. We are introduced to him being a stable and supportive mate who then experiences lethal doses of insecurity. The same is true for David's wife Marnie whose insecurity over David's connection to his adoptive sister Nathalie causes anxieties and odd behavior. That the search then results in the ultimate schism of the bond between brother and sister is even less welcome. Satisfying elements of the story are with the adoptive Lynne and her working through her feelings and the scene with son David where he confirms his bond with his adoptive mother. I also enjoyed the exploration into Cora's world and the social situation that brought her to give up her baby. Overall, I found this an enjoyable reading experience. The issues are weighty. It made me really picture the feelings of adopted children. I reflected on my own family and how it might be different if adoption results from the death of birth parents rather than social circumstance. Trollope's pacing and command of language are masterful. The setting of locations in Great Britain makes us feel as if we'd been there. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: My Real Parents
Review: When my daughter was little and would get angry with my wife or I, she'd often say, "I want my real parents." As a person who had adoptive grandparents, I found this subject to be fascinating. Trollope's book answers the question about just who our real parents are. If there is a lesson, what I got was that our real parents are the ones who give us love while we're growing up. The issues in the book are riveting. How our sense of family can be threatened by change and impacts each member of the group shines through. I found it particularly significant that as David and Nathalie find birth mothers Carole and Cora, the reality of these women is a shock to how they had been imagined. Equally fascinating is the dynamic within Carole's family as her husband Connor is supportive and son Martin short circuits finding that he is suddenly not the oldest of his mother's sons. The characters are all deep. However, the story does take unexpected turns that like an unwanted half brother were not entirely welcome. Nathalie's live-in boyfriend Steve's affair seemed strange to me. We are introduced to him being a stable and supportive mate who then experiences lethal doses of insecurity. The same is true for David's wife Marnie whose insecurity over David's connection to his adoptive sister Nathalie causes anxieties and odd behavior. That the search then results in the ultimate schism of the bond between brother and sister is even less welcome. Satisfying elements of the story are with the adoptive Lynne and her working through her feelings and the scene with son David where he confirms his bond with his adoptive mother. I also enjoyed the exploration into Cora's world and the social situation that brought her to give up her baby. Overall, I found this an enjoyable reading experience. The issues are weighty. It made me really picture the feelings of adopted children. I reflected on my own family and how it might be different if adoption results from the death of birth parents rather than social circumstance. Trollope's pacing and command of language are masterful. The setting of locations in Great Britain makes us feel as if we'd been there. Enjoy!
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