I’d first like to thank TLC Book Tours for sending me Somebody Else’s Daughter by Elizabeth Brundage for review. When I first accepted the book, though, I was under the impression that it was mostly about the thoughts and feelings of Willa Golding, a teenager who was adopted as a baby by wealthy parents. It’s not. Although Willa’s point of view certainly comes into the story, this book is about misogyny, p*rn*gr*phy, pr*stituti*on, drug abuse, and a host of other sordid activities. Before I give my other comments on the book, I’d like to state that in no way do I believe that Brundage endorses these vices; however, I also don’t agree with her presentation of the case against them either. This book is brutally graphic, and I just wasn’t prepared for that. Knowing that this will color my review, I’ll try to be as fair as possible.
The book starts out by introducing Nate Gallagher and his girlfriend Catherine as strung out heroin addicts. Catherine gets pregnant with Willa and is clean for a time, but soon after Willa is born Cat becomes just too sick to care for her, and they decide to give her up for adoption. The couple who adopt her, Joe and Candace, are wealthy residents of the Berkshires and seem to have it all, yet they are hiding some pretty dark secrets. Very dark. Not only that, but it seems quite a few other characters in the story have even scarier skeletons in their closets. Here’s where it starts to break down for me a bit. It seems a bit too much that all of ‘this’ is going on in the same small community; it just is not believable to me. Gosh, I hope that wouldn’t be the case, anyway.
As Willa grows up, she attends an elite private school headed by Jack and Maggie Heath. Their daughter Ava is good friends with Willa, and the two girls have a group that they hang out with who are into alcohol, drugs, dares, and the like. All the girls are smitten with the new boy at school, Teddy, but it is Willa that catches his eye. Meanwhile, the new creative writing teacher at the school is a Mr. Gallagher. Yes, it’s Nate Gallagher, Willa’s birth father, but he tells no one of his relationship to Willa.
This is where the book then goes off into the weird areas listed above. Although I believe it was Brundage’s intent to bring awareness into the sufferings of women in these so-called ‘professions,’ the horrible descriptions of the things they endure was just too unnecessarily graphic. I know I am very conservative compared to most, but I have a hard time imagining that an average female reader would be able to get through this book without disgust and revulsion. I honestly would not have gotten through much of it at all had I not committed to this review. In addition, there are some descriptions of Willa’s s*xual experimentation that were very explicit to the point of poor taste.
I am honestly not trying to bash Elizabeth Brundage as a writer or as a person. However, I believe I do represent a certain group of women (especially Christians) who share my views. I also believe it is my responsibility to speak out about content that is so over the top and objectionable so that those who feel the same as I do can stay clear of it or at least make an informed decision about it.
Many reviews of this book were very favorable, so I do encourage you to read those as well if you’d like differing viewpoints.
It seems this story has polarized readers. Some love it, while others intensely dislike the book. I fall into the latter camp. I thought I was really going to like it initially, but then the story went way over the top into unbelievability for me. I found myself disliking it more and more as the pages progressed. It’s really almost impossible to speak about the issues I had with the book without giving away some huge spoilers, but I will give you a taste of what it’s about.
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I get angry just thinking about how much I hated this book. To top it all off, Haruf likes to “be different” and “get creative” by not using any punctuation marks AND by using a multitude of asinine run-on sentences.
