The Doctor's Daughter

Alice Brill has an intimation of something gone wrong. Her father is in a nursing home. Her marriage has been left to fend for itself, and her youngest child shows himself to be irresponsible. Anna Fields has chosen a minor key in which to read this novel. That's acceptable for some of the disappointments that move the story, but she rarely gives a bright color to the characters. The men bark their words out in tones that make them all sound angry. The dialogue is sometimes lively and varied and uses a wide vocal range, but the tempo of a sentence or a phrase or a paragraph never alters from the one preceding it. J.P. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

October 31, 2005
A keen observer of the drama inherent in family dynamics, Wolitzer (Ending
; Hearts
; etc.) returns after a 12-year hiatus with this novel about Alice Brill, a 51-year-old wife, mother, frustrated writer and "book doctor" who wakes one morning with a disturbing pressure behind her sternum. The daughter of a once renowned but now senile surgeon, Alice initially thinks her symptom might be a sign of breast cancer, which took her mother's life 30 years before. Or could it be psychological: a reaction to being downsized as senior editor at a book publisher? or a premonition that the recent squabbling with her husband, Everett, signals a point of no return in an often competitive marriage? Is it unfulfilled creative impulse? In her attempt to diagnose her symptom, Alice scours her childhood relationship with her then imperious father, her mother's poetry, Everett's motivations for harshly disciplining their youngest son, and her own unexpectedly erotic response to a talented new writer who comes to her for advice on his first novel. With her customary grace and perspicacity, Wolitzer reveals her characters' humanity as they alternately flirt with and shun the very truth they seek about themselves, until escalating complications force them to choose to grow or be left behind.