Also of interest...in parenting and misparenting

last updated 8 January 2015

The Astor Orphan

by Alexandra Aldrich (Ecco, $25)

Alexandra Aldrich “has a barbedly laconic way with anecdotes of her Gothic childhood,” said Megan O’Grady in Vogue.com. A descendant of John Jacob Astor, the author grew up in a dilapidated mansion among cash-strapped adults who, according to this “not terribly fond portrait,” practiced child rearing by neglect. Though engrossing, Aldrich’s account ends shortly after she hits 14, so “it’s hard to know just how far she’s managed to put her ‘privileged yet impoverished’ existence behind her.”

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Books about adoption “tend to gloss over the truth,” said Martha Nichols in CSMonitor.com. Jennifer Gilmore’s third novel offers instead a “refreshingly frank” portrayal of one infertile couple’s journey through the adoption process. As the prospective parents find themselves growing impatient with the birth mother and feeling outcast from the mommy culture of their Brooklyn neighborhood, they reveal themselves to be “flawed in the ways many good parents are.”

The woman at the heart of this “hypnotic” memoir will make you wonder how the author ever survived to adulthood, said Joe Gross in The Austin American-Statesman. At once neglectful and abusive, Kathi Ruta even served as a drug dealer to her teenage daughter. She encouraged the girl’s intellectual curiosity, though, and helped her get a seat in an exclusive prep school. Domenica here captures “the good and the bad, the horror and the hope” of a decidedly turbulent mother-daughter relationship.

This one’s for true Carol Burnett fans only, said Phil Dyess-Nugent in the A.V. Club. A tribute to her oldest child, who died of cancer in 2002 at age 38, it opens with about 40 pages “full of touching, funny stories that are all the more enjoyable for reflecting the author’s sensibility.” But the evolving portrait of Carrie Hamilton, actress and aspiring writer, soon becomes an anthology of Carrie’s emails, followed by one of her unfinished short stories. It’s a touching tribute, but “barely a book.”