A Family Daughter (Halfway Through)

Filed under: Books — purplehsiaoling at 8:06 am on Saturday, March 31, 2007

     I got the book because it is publicized to be "an engaging and insightful novel about the joys and complications of modern life."  I am all for engaging and insightful stuff, so this book was a definitely must-have.  Well, halfway through, there has been more complications than joys but still, no regrets.  Because engaging and insightful still win but gosh, this book has got me all depressed during a weekend.  Haha..

     Why the book is depressing (not in any particular order from the book but from what I remember.  I have this tendency of blocking out unpleasantness from my mind, so this might be a problem):

1.  The protagonist, Abby, lost her father in a road accident.  He fell asleep while driving to a skiing place.  He had wanted to go skiing with her (it was heartwrenching the way he tried to persuade her to go.  Oh, Abby!  " ‘That was so sad,’ Miranda (Abby’s varsity roommate) said when Abby hung up the phone").  In Abby’s own words in mourning: I feel responsible.  I should have gone skiing with him.  He wanted me to go.  I should have gone.  It’s my fault that he died.  I could have made it different.  And instead I went to this stupid party where you had to dress like a slut.

2.  When Abby was a kid, her mother divorced her father to find her way in life.  Her mother thought that marrying and having a child young had robbed her of opportunities in life.  Halfway through the book, her mom was still bumming around, being in a relationship with a woman and a disappointment to her father and not being a proper mother to Abby.

3.  Growing up, Abby was very close to her mother’s brother, Jamie.  After her father’s death, he looked her up to comfort her.  Instead, they got engaged in a relationship.  Then, suddenly, an idea was thrown in the book that perhaps they might be cousins to avoid the sin of incest.  The idea was that his mother was actually Abby’s perfect older sister who had him out of wedlock.  Halfway through, they confronted the grandmother but she insisted that she is Jamie’s mother. 

4.  Anyway, after leaving Abby when the guilt was unbearable, Jamie met a spoilt rich girl named Saffron.  He wanted to marry her but she couldn’t stay faithful to him and him alone.  Throw in another complication.  Saffron’s parents were divorced too and her mother had adopted a boy, TJ, to do something useful.  Halfway through, she died and the boy inherited her property because she had unintentionally left her daughter out of her will.  Boy’s mother, Katya, came back to reclaim her son and of course, the property.  Guess what happened?  Jamie married Katya and they took custody of TJ.  Saffron got back her mother’s money but gave a generous settlement to TJ’s new guardians and some money in trust until he grew up.  I forgot to mention that Jamie was a bummer and disappointment to his father as well.

5.  One graduate student, Peter, who taught Abby in varsity, was in love with her but she kept pushing him away.  Halfway through, he got the suspicions that Abby and Jamie might have been involved in a hanky-panky.  So, is Peter still in the picture or not?  That remains to be seen.  I kind of like his attachment to Abby though.

     Halfway through, Abby had just finished writing a novel using bits of her family stories and making some of it up.  She was getting it published but was worried about how her grandparents were going to take the book.  In the beginning, she used real names for her book’s characters but I think she changed them somehow.     
 
     So, I have another half of the book to go.  Hopefully there will be more joys in this part.  Keeping my fingers crossed.  Well, it doesn’t matter if the writer throws in more complications.  I like Abby and that’s all that matters.  Chuckling..