The Astor Orphan
by Alexandra Aldrich (Ecco, $25)
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The Mothers
by Jennifer Gilmore (Scribner, $26)
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.”
With or Without You
by Domenica Ruta (Spiegel & Grau, $25)
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.
Carrie and Me
by Carol Burnett (Simon & Schuster, $25)
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.”