Friends And Strangers

What’s it about? Elizabeth is an accomplished author and journalist when she and her husband Andrew decide to move with their new baby out of Brooklyn and back to Andrew’s small-town.  As she makes the transition away from New York she begins to rely on her college-age babysitter Sam more and more.  Sam is about to finish college and is struggling with her own choices as she and Elizabeth bond over wine and the baby. What did it make me think about? Privilege. Perspective. Should I read it? So I loved​ Saints For All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan and was really excited to get this book from the library.  I liked aspects of this book, but too often I felt detached from these characters.  Elizabeth was hard to like, and yet I didn’t dislike her…  I think that lack of feeling for the characters just left me a little ambivalent about the story.  I do think the book raises a lot of interesting issues and would make for a good discussion.  I will still be looking forward to the next book J. Courtney Sullivan writes. Quote- “The bond between parent and child was all-consuming, and yet its power was not cumulative.  It had to be remade again and again throughout the course of a lifetime.  A mother could do everything right early on, and still, if she failed to renegotiate the terms, all would be lost.”