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 3rd 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 8th-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.)
