I saw this book gleaming at me from the window of a Charing Cross bookstore and because I loved Anne Tyler’s last book, The Amateur oarriage, I thought it would get me through those pesky jetlag hours from 2am to 4am without too much trouble.
I was right. It hit the spot perfectly. It’s early morning at Baltimore airport and two families are waiting separately to collect baby girls they are adopting from Korea. one family is the Yazdans: Ziba, her husband Sami and his mother Maryam, immigrants from Iran. The other family is the sprawling all-American Donaldsons: Bitsy and Brad and an enormous cast of assorted relatives.
When they first encounter each other, the families have nothing in common but their baby girls. However that’s enough to start a relationship, and as the years pass, they grow closer with every Arrival Day party thrown to mark that initial meeting of their children and each other.
Ziba is drawn to the all-Americanness of it all, while Maryam is sceptical of the whole business. And Bitsy is so irritating to begin with you really want to pinch her hard on the fleshy part of the underarm (is it normal to want to do this to irritating people or is it just me?). But there’s a lot of humour in her knit-your-own-peanut-butter brand of parenting, especially when it involves the Potty Party and the Binky Fairy.
In the end, though, Bitsy is not so bad. She’s just one of us. As is Ziba, and even the aloof Maryam. Turns out everyone belongs.
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