The Mistress's Daughter

In the early days of the internet, Amazon.com was the best place to find new authors that might pique my interest. I read about A. M. Homes for the first time on Amazon, read about The End of Alice, a novel about two sexual predators exchanging letters, one of them in prison. When I was at Barnes and Noble last week, I decided to buy This Book Will Save Your Life, by Homes. The next day I found two more of her books at the library.

The Mistress's Daughter is about Homes beginning a relationship with her birth mother and father. They are imperfect and flawed people, not at all the image she had of them when she was a child. The Mistress's Daughter is a book about what it means to be adopted, about genealogy, about who owns our history. It was an enjoyable, easy read; the sentences are logical and sparse, with very little to slow the flow of reading. But it is a slight thing. Unlike a novel, where the author is free to conflate, to inject meaning, Homes can only write about those things can happen. She can't tell us that everything was happening for a reason or invent a happy ending.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone but my mother and only for the parts about her genealogical research. My mother was a genealogy hound for years, the section on her search for her ancestors reminded me of my mother's own passion for the dead. But time is swift; I would save my recommendations for meatier fare.