Wow! What a book!  You know something bad is going to happen because the book jacket mentions it – good strategy.  Anna Quindlen brings us into this wonderful ordinary life of a modern family, three children, two professional parents and a dog.  The Lathams are a typical suburban family that leads a hurried and predictable life, slightly unappreciated until it all spirals down into the abyss.  You are not sure what is going to happen as you read the story, so everything seems more heighten.

At first, you see small stains on the idyllic white fence, small things that happen in most families.  “Glen thinks I’m over involved with our children’s inner lives, especially Ruby’s,” Mary Beth Latham said.  But slowly the stain grows larger.  Maybe an outsider could see what was happening – maybe from a distance it showed.  The daughter, Ruby, stopped eating during freshman year.

Ruby and her long-time boyfriend, Kiernan, split-up as most teenagers do.  Kiernan is distraught and follows Ruby everywhere.  He takes pictures of her and sends them to her or puts them in her room.  Ruby complains to her mother about Kiernan, but like most moms she tells her daughter that Kiernan is “just lost.”  Kiernan has been a fixture in the Latham household most of his life, first as a playmate, then Ruby’s boyfriend.

Ruby trying to make her mother understand that Kiernan has crossed the line says: “Mommy, the thing you do, trying to make everyone happy?  Sometimes it makes nobody happy.  You’re always making excuses for him, like you’re trying to make up for something, like you’re trying to make it up to poor Kiernan that his life sucks.  And that makes me feel bad, and it makes him feel entitled.”  How many of us as mothers have tried to ease a tense situation by saying that it’s OK, he or she is lonely, lost, helpless?  By the end of the book you may want to rethink that.

Quindlen stated in interview for Amazon about the illusions “of security and control, especially in terms of motherhood. We think that if we do the right things, provide the right kind of care and oversight, we can keep our children safe from peril…it’s completely illusory.”

Another aspect Quindlen talks with Amazon about is that she was “distressed at how many people immediately concluded that Mary Beth was at fault….”   We as a society always look to put blame on something or someone immediately – life is extremely complicated and rarely is one person or one thing to blame for a situation, usually there are lots of moving parts.  It makes us feel safer when we find someone/something to blame.  We don’t have to think of it further.

Quindlen also stated that “the big theme in the novel is balancing oversight and independence.”  Parenting is as complicated as life is.  What works for one parent doesn’t always work for another.

This book kept most of our members up many a night.  It shocks you and strips away your notions of safety and suburbia.  Anna Quindlen could have been describing any one of our lives, and she is amazing at the showing us the contrasts that make up our lives.

An absolute must read!  Great discussions will happen, but they won’t wait for your next book club, you’ll all be on the phone with each other as soon as you finish the book.

Rating:  9.7