Review by Booklist Review
April Epner, brought up by adoptive parents in Providence, lives quietly in Quincy, Massachusetts, where she teaches high school Latin. Suddenly, two years after her parents' deaths, her birth mother swoops down upon her. Bernice Gravermen, now known as talk-show hostess "Bernice G!" sets out to create an instant mother-daughter relationship with a grown woman inclined to mellow self-effacement. First she tells April that her father was John F. Kennedy. When that backfires, she pushes her to the wall of embarrassment by staging a reunion with April's birth father--whom Bernice never got around to divorcing--on television. Lipman's wry portrayal of the timeless mother-daughter battle complicated by an orphan's hurt feelings is very real yet never mawkish. An engaging story of two well-developed personalities who take up their familial relationship, in many ways as though it had never been interrupted. --Cynthia Ogorek
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Quiet and content April Epner, a high school Latin teacher whose adoptive parents are recently deceased, is claimed by her birth mother, an obnoxious TV talk show hostess. ``Raising laughter and tears with acutely observed characterizations and dry, affectionate wit, Lipman also keeps dealing out the surprises, leaving readers smiling long after the last page is turned,'' PW said. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
What happens when a well-adjusted adult is found by the birth mother she never sought? In Lipman's deft hands, the relationship between high school teacher April Epner and her newly discovered mother, talk-show hostess Bernice Graverman, is often strained, replete with humorous misunderstandings, but ultimately a warm and positive experience for both. Lipman's depiction of a 1980s family is a skillful rendering of the morals and manners of our time. Each character displays his or her human contradictions, whether it's Bernice frantically inventing preposterous stories concerning April's birth father, or April tentatively moving toward romance with the school librarian. This is a delightful addition to public library fiction collections.-- Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A mother tracks down the daughter she gave up for adoption 36 years earlier--a story that might be guaranteed wet-hanky material for Oprah or Donahue, though in this winningly wry and dry-eyed first novel, Lipman (stories: Into Love and Out Again, 1987) gives it a brand-new take. April Epner, happily raised by her now. dead adoptive parents, has never wasted much time being curious about the woman who gave birth to her: ""My biological mother was seventeen when she had me in 1952, and even that was more than I wanted to know about her."" Enter Bernice Graverman, star of a local TV talk show and natural mother of April Epner. It's not exactly love-at-first-sight when the prima donna mother, who wears ""wet-look white eyeshadow,"" arranges a reunion with her unassuming daughter, who teaches high-school Latin and favors Indian-print cotton jumpers. But it isn't unrelieved animosity either. Lipman plays it beautifully--right along the edge--as the two women grapple and blunder their way into each other's lives. Bernice tells whoppers about the identity of April's father, and April doesn't let her get away with it. April stiffly denies that her childhood was ever anything but rosy, and Bernice doesn't let her get away with it. Bit by bit they clear a path to the heart of matters and, as they do, their lives change. April falls in love; Bernice learns a few lessons about living with reality. And, finally, they realize they fit each other--not always comfortably, not without some squirming, but, really, not so differently from most mothers and daughters. Funny, moving, and very wise in the way of life: April and Bernice outshine anything on prime time. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
