A Good Enough Mother
Ruth Hartland is a psychotherapist with years of experience. But professional skill is no guard against private grief. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her beautiful, difficult, fragile son Tom, a boy who never "fit in," disappeared a year and a half earlier. She cannot give up hope of finding him, but feels she is living a kind of half-life, waiting for him to return.
Enter a new patient, Dan--unstable and traumatized--who looks exactly like her missing son. She is determined to help him, but soon, her own complicated feelings, about how she has failed her own boy, cloud her professional judgement. And before long, the unthinkable becomes a shattering reality....
An utterly compelling drama with a timebomb at its core, A Good Enough Mother is a brilliant, beautiful story of mothering, and how to let go of the ones we love when we must.
My Review
I dug into this book with both hands. This is the type of book that I really enjoy reading. It started out just great. I was really feeling it for the first several chapters. Than the story slowed down and I found myself struggling throughout the rest of the story. What was most sad is the ending. It was a bit of a let down in my opinion. There is nothing worse than to get to the end of a book to have a weak ending.
I got Ruth's view point of how she crossed the line when it came to Dan. She was missing that void with the disappearance of her son. So when Dan came along and he kind of reminded her of her son, she could not separate doctor/patient relationship with parent/son relationship. The story Dan shared was sad. It did allow me to feel sympathy towards him. Yet, this is one of the low points for me. I did not feel great sympathy for Ruth or Dan. In addition, where was the intensity?
Overall, this was a fine read but there was room for improvements. This again is my opinion. I would give this author and her books another try.
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