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The Red Thread (2011)

by Ann Hood(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0393339769 (ISBN13: 9780393339765)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: It was clear from the start that Maya (protagonist) was still attempting to come to terms with (or rather avoiding dealing with) some traumatic event in her past. Although one could guess that it had something to do with a child, it is not until a third of the way into the book that we discover what happened). So she throws herself into her work as the owner of an adoption agency specializing in the adoption of Chinese girls (these are the babies abandoned due to the "one child policy" in many provinces). The book goes back and forth between the stories of American couples waiting to adopt and the Chinese families who abandon their daughters and hope they will have a better life. These stories were heartbreaking to read but it was a bit harder to like the stories and perso... morenalities of American couples. Nell, in particular, who is used to getting everything she wants (she has checked things off her to do list since she was a young girl but is stymied when she is unable to conceive or even to push her way to the front of the queue by paying someone off). Yes these couple are human with doubts and insecurities but how some of them dealt with them was less than appealing (an affair between two members of the adoption group for instance). In the acknowledgements, you find out that the author lost a child of her own and later adopted a girl from China so while a novel, I imagine that writing this was part if her healing process. Overall, this was an easy to read book (in two days - I'm on a reading streak) and I would have enjoyed it more if I could have sympathized more with the American couples.
review 2: Have you ever seen one of those old movies which focuses on a team from the military, and each member of the team is an archetype rather than a character? You have the religious one, the smart one, the sassy one, the crazy one, and so on? Well, reading "The Red Thread" sort of reminded me of that.I will give Ann Hood credit: she gets the emotional scarring of losing a child exactly right. Beyond that, she tries to do too much in this little novel, leaving you with little more than mild examples of the trials and tribulations of adoption - what brings you to the point of considering adoption, infertility, and so on. By trifurcating (if that's even a word) the book between Maya, the head of the adoption agency (who is Harboring a Secret that she exposes in the most unrealistic of ways), the women in China who give up daughters for adoption, and the families adopting, she ends up leaving all of them as shallow pools rather than deep waters. A far more successful novel would have been to show side-by-side the families both adopting and surrendering daughters, with Maya as merely a fulcrum upon which to balance the story.And she doesn't write men very well. The small vignettes of heartbreak of the Chinese mothers is profound and poignant and left me with wanting to hear and see more of their lives. Beyond that, this novel is weak and thin stuff. less

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