In a Country of Mothers (Mint First Edition)

Jody Goodman, an aspiring filmmaker, and Claire Roth, a middle-aged counselor of troubled souls, develop a friendship that allows each to escape her prescribed role. By the author of The Safety of Objects. 25,000 first printing.

In two previous books, Homes ( The Safety of Objects ) has written about people caught in the midst of change and unable (or unwilling), at first, to control or understand it. Naturally, one of her best subjects is adolescence; Jack , her first novel, tells of a boy coming to terms with his estranged father's newfound homosexuality. Here, Homes enlarges her scope with exhilarating assurance, paying equal attention to people young and mature as they pass from what they once were to whoever they must finally be. The novel concerns Jody, a frail but driven young woman pursuing a film career, and Claire, a successful, middle-aged psychiatrist who, many years ago, gave up a child born out of wedlock to foster parents. The third-person narrative shifts between the two women as Jody becomes Claire's intermittent patient and steady obsession, and the doctor, though happily married with a family of her own, becomes convinced that Jody is her long-lost child. But for Homes, this plot twist, despite its considerable suspense, serves mainly as a useful route for exploring the flux, passion and perversity of binding love. She does this with wit, skillful pacing and a sympathy for characters and their dislocations that borders--agreeably--on the uncritical.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A shrink convinces herself that one of her patients is her lost daughter: the strong premise has a weak follow-through in Homes's first novel for adults (after her YA novel Jack, 1989, and her 1990 story collection, The Safety of Objects). When Claire Roth was in college, she became pregnant by her English professor. Dead-set against a back-alley abortion (this was 1966) and getting no sympathy from her ice-cold WASP parents, Claire was forced to give up her baby for adoption (by a Jewish family, she insisted). Now 43, a successful Manhattan therapist with a good marriage and two sons, she is still haunted by that early loss, still self-punishing. Her newest patient is Jody Goodman (whose viewpoint alternates with Claire's). The outwardly self-confident Jody, who works for a film producer, is getting the jitters over her imminent departure for UCLA's film school. Despite a wonderfully helpful mother, Jody has always had problems making changes and getting close to people. Is this related to her adoption? When Claire first sees the possibility that Jody is her daughter (times and places jibe), the therapist considers her own violent reaction as a countertransference problem; but then Claire starts behaving unprofessionally, fawning over Jody while neglecting her own family. After this tension, there is a falling- off. Jody leaves for California, escorted by her mother, and the only way Homes can reconnect her protagonists is to have Jody fly back east with a Mysterious Virus, while Claire is spinning her wheels. The climax is effectively ghoulish but resolves nothing. Snappy dialogue, transparently clear style, and characters handled with just the right amounts of sympathy and acerbity: Homes has a bright future--but, for now, readers have this intriguing if ultimately disappointing debut. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.