Book Review: THE PROBABLE SON

Title: The Probable Son

Author: Cindy Jiban

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Pages: 252

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Elsa Vargas, middle grade school math teacher, and her husband, Eugene ‘Ham’ Hamilton, have a baby boy in 2005. They are thrilled and grateful for the blessing, especially after the stillbirth of their first daughter, Inga, three years ago. While still in the hospital, Elsa realizes that the baby she is nursing is not the baby that was handed to her soon after she gave birth. She fears that her own baby is bonding with some other mother, whose own baby has been handed to her by mistake. But no one believes her.

In 2019, Elsa sees a boy, Thomas Humphrey, in her class, who not only shares his birthday with her own son, Bird, but is more like her, Ham and younger son, Garvey, than Bird could ever be. Is Thomas the son she has always believed was taken away from her? Can she afford to pursue the truth? How would it upend their lives?

 

The book was written from the 3^rd person past tense PoV of Elsa, except for an occasional chapter from the PoV of the PTO chair Natalie Trowbridge and Thomas’s mother Katharine Humphrey.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

It was interesting to see how the truth was first teased out through the probability lesson in Math class.

The chapters about the loss of a child were written from a place of sensitivity and grief. The writing of the narrative sections was handled well. The scenes describing the birthing experience and the nursing and bonding with Bird when he was an infant and the truth of how Elsa makes her peace with her situation were written with heart. I could relate to these scenes.

I cringed with second-hand pain and embarrassment at the manner in which Elsa came to terms with her loss.  

I liked Bird and Thomas a lot.

One quote I liked:

There were always scars; even parents who didn’t inflict abuse couldn’t protect their children from moments of terror, tangles with shame, and the way wills got bent to those in power. A family … had a secret internal logic, that set the dials on its children, adjusting the amplitudes and magnitudes until they grew into something genes alone couldn’t explain.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

All the other characters. They weren’t written as sensitively and affectionately as Bird and Thomas. I found Elsa very annoying.

Elsa’s, and the author’s, explanation for why Thomas was Elsa’s long-lost son, given how closely his personality and habits matched those of Elsa herself, Ham and Garvey, was baseless. The fact that Bird likes unbuttered popcorn, while the others love theirs buttered; his love for the fantasy genre, which they hate; his optimism and easy-going nature, while the others are more pessimistic and outgoing, and his belief in God, which the others don’t share, seem to convince Elsa that he is not the child she gave birth to.

In this story, the cross-family similarities between Thomas and the Hamiltons and between Bird and the Humphreys are so intense, it’s as if Nature does everything while Nurture does nothing. I wanted to tell Elsa that wasn’t how genetics works, and that her simplistic explanation simply disregards the power of the nurturing and upbringing that a child receives.

The dialogues were very ordinary and banal.

The whole process by which Elsa proceeds to get the spit or saliva of Bird and Thomas, who is her ‘probable’ son, is disgusting, and I wanted to skip right ahead. This was one chapter that needed to be told in one line, not shown in so much detail. Even Bird thought that the whole spit collection thing was gross.

And just as it seemed that we had escaped the horror of spit and saliva, there was an extended chapter and more about something called ‘gleeking,’ something I’d never heard of before, and something I wish I’d never heard about.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

The subplot about Boys of America (BOA) was so unnecessary. Subplots should be related in some way to the main plot for maximum effect. Here the connection between them was weak.

What was the nonsense about the invisible hamster? An 8^th-grade student killed the hamster by mistake and his mother told Elsa not to reveal the truth to the other students. So she says it’s invisible, and what? And eighth-grade students believe her?

The affair between school principal Robert Schusterman and PTO member Natalie Trowbridge seemed forced.

Garvey referring to Jennifer, the friend of his mother, by name didn’t seem appropriate, given his age.

The constant similarities that Elsa pointed out between members of her own family and Thomas were annoying. As if real families have no differences at all.

Elsa pulls one of Bird’s corkscrew curls out to straight and we are told that it makes a “sproing” sound when she lets it go. Corkscrew curls, despite the word corkscrew signifying metal, are still hair. And hair does not make ‘sproing” sounds.

In one of the chapters, Elsa and Krista, her younger sister, go for a long walk around a lake. Over pages and pages in the book, they talk about many things, including Krista’s fitness levels, the state of her kitchen, the Mexican Talavera tiles she has installed in her kitchen, leading up to the Mexican ancestry of the Vargas family, and what the members of their extended family are doing, before this lengthy talk reaches the destination planned all along, namely, Elsa’s decision to check out the app, MyTree.

 

ALL SAID AND DONE: 

I would have liked this book more if it had been just about the family dynamics. The BOA took away from keeping me invested in the book, and the whole spit/saliva/gleeking nonsense was a huge turn-off.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)