Coming Back to Me: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

Overview

It can take a long time to build up a life, and only moments to destroy it. Gary and Molly met in the way couples do: after a long haul of being single, quickly becoming soulmates and rejoicing in that fact. Beautiful, red-haired Molly ignites a fire in Gary and he eases the pain she feels about her past. Starting a family is something they both want badly to do, and with great joy Molly finds herself pregnant.

When she leaves for the hospital that things start to go seriously wrong. Just a few weeks later Gary is alone with a newborn and a mountain of medical bills he has no means to pay for. Desperate for help, he calls on Molly's long estranged sister, Suzanne.

Many authors have tackled the challenges of love and marriage. Caroline Leavitt claims the turf in her own exciting way, twisting and turning a medical nightmare into an opportunity for redemption and hope, in Coming Back to Me.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312305543
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/01/2003
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Caroline Leavitt, a columnist for The Boston Globe, is the author of several previous novels, including Is This Tomorrow and Living Other Lives. Her essays, articles and short stories have appeared in Salon, Redbook, McCall's, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey with her husband, author Jeff Tamarkin, and their young son.

What People are Saying About This

Jacqueline Mitchard

Human nature can run from Caroline Leavitt, but cannot hide. She knows people, their fear, their blunders and their reformation, and she tells them plain.
—(Jacqueline Mitchard, Author of (The Deep End of the Ocean)

Jane Bernstein

Caroline Leavitt has written a warm and immensely appealing novel, with vivid, unforgettable characters.
—(Jane Bernstein, Author of Bereft: A Sister's Story )

Katherine Weber

Readers who wait impatiently for the next Jane Hamilton or Sue Miller will find another favorite in Caroline Leavitt.

Katharine Weber

A rich and personal novel. What excellent writing, and what subtlety and intelligence inform this book. Readers who wait impatiently for the next Jane Hamilton or Sue Miller novel will find another favorite in Caroline Leavitt.
—(Katherine Weber, Author of The Music Lesson)

Jacquelyn Mitchard

Human nature can run from Caroline Leavitt but cannot hide. She knows people, their fears, their blunders, and their reformation, and she tells them plain.

Anne Lamott

Caroline Leavitt is a marvelous writer.
—(Anne Lamott, Author of Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year)

Reading Group Guide

1. Gary and Molly are drawn together because they both feel orphaned. When they move into New Jersey, they find a tightly-knit community that perceives them as outsiders, which makes Gary and Molly so uncomfortable that they draw even closer together. What is Leavitt saying about the notion of community? How and why does this notion change throughout the book?
2. Gary thinks: "Events didn't turn out the way you always hoped they would. But the thing was that sometimes people came through. The most unexpected people in the most unexpected ways." Who were the unexpected people for Gary, and how did they help?
3. A cornerstone of the book is two memories of the same event: Molly's version and Suzanne's version of the time when Suzanne ran away from home with her boyfriend Ivan and how it affected the family, especially the relationship between the sisters. Why do you think the author gave us two versions of the same incident?
4. The theme of memory crops up again when Molly is in the hospital and has been given memory blockers and can't remember seeing her family at all. What is Leavitt saying about how and why we remember what we do? Are there ever things people need to forget?
5. Some reviewers noted a surprisingly dark world view while others focused in on the healing element of hope. Molly, after all, survives her ordeal, but when she asks a doctor if she's cured, the answer is "we don't know." The last sentence of the book says that Molly lives, but it's prefaced with "Right now." What do you think this says about destiny and fate and our ability to plan for the future, and why is this hopeful?
6. Why do you think the characters in this book are so accessible to the reader? How do you think the author made sure you would care about the characters, even the ones like Suzanne who are behaving badly?
7. Coming Back to Me is told from the perspectives of three different people. How would the book be different if it was told by just Gary? Or by just Suzanne?
8. Molly and Suzanne both had a missing-in-action mother, a woman who was there, but who was more intent on finding a husband then attending to her daughter's needs. Why do you think the author made Molly a missing-in-action mother, too? What is the significance of the way Molly finally bonds with baby Otis?

Editorial Reviews

"Human nature can run from Caroline Leavitt but cannot hide. She knows people, their fears, their blunders, and their reformation, and she tells them plain."

Jacquelyn Mitchard

"Leavitt's devotion to her central characters...gives the story a certain gravity."

The New Yorker

"A heart-wrenching work about family love and encroaching tragedy that will keep readers engrossed until its final pages."

Philadelphia Inquirer

"[T]ender...Leavitt conjures up a cast of nuanced characters."

The Washington Post

"Readers who wait impatiently for the next Jane Hamilton or Sue Miller will find another favorite in Caroline Leavitt."

Katherine Weber

"A gripping tale of a young family in crisis."

The Boston Globe

Leavitt has created a cast of nuanced characters.
—The Washington Post

John Freeman

Leavitt's devotion to her central characters..gives the story a certain gravity.

New Yorker

A heart-wrenching work about family love and encroaching tragedy that will keep readers engrossed until its final pages.
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Paula Friedman

Redemption as unlikely as miracles occurs. Author Leavitt draws her characters with an experienced hand... a fine reading experience.

Booklist

Leavitt has penned a can't-put-down novel.

New Jersey Monthly Magazine

Another installment of Leavitt's consistently strong work.
—The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Rebecca Sodergren

The pleasure is in its people. Leavitt does an extraordinary job... with a wry, unpredictable sense of humor.
—The Flint Journal

Dave Forsmark

When book designer Gary Breyer and third-grade teacher Molly Goldman meet at a New Jersey diner, it's love at first sight in Leavitt's (Living Other Lives) latest drama. Gary's parents were killed in a freak accident when he was a baby; Molly's only family is an older sister, Suzanne, who ran away from home at 17 and hasn't been seen since. The sisters' few conversations consist of Suzanne calling to borrow money Molly can't afford to give her; when she finally refuses, Suzanne drops off the radar for good. Gary and Molly wed after a brief courtship, buy a home and are delighted at the birth of their son, Otis at last they feel like members of a "normal" family. But their joy is short-lived: while still in the hospital, Molly becomes gravely ill and falls into a coma, leaving Gary to care for Otis with the help of dour, flaky, live-in nurse Gerta. Then Gary loses his job. Desperate and facing astronomical medical bills, he contacts Suzanne and asks her to return to New Jersey from California to help with the baby. Broke and alone, she accepts. At first her selfishness and utter incompetence strain credibility, but her sudden transformation to conscientious, doting aunt, while inevitable, seems equally implausible. The narrative, told from the shifting perspectives of the three principals, is peppered with bland, disagreeable secondary characters creepy neighbors, an arrogant doctor and Suzanne's ex-boyfriend, Ivan. There's little here to hold readers' interest even the drama of Molly's illness and mounting tensions between Gary and Suzanne lack suspense and the reward for having to endure these people never comes: the unsatisfying ending leaves too many issues unresolved. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gary and Molly's joy at becoming parents comes to a quick and devastating end when Otis's birth leaves Molly with a life-threatening medical condition. To make matters worse, just when he most needs work to pay Molly's astronomical medical bills, Gary is fired from the publishing company in whose art department he works. In desperation, he calls Molly's long-estranged sister, Suzanne, to return to New Jersey and care for the baby while he spends his days at the hospital with the comatose and desperately ill Molly and his nights at his new job as a security guard. When Molly finally awakens and learns the extent of her illness, she realizes that the fragility of existence (with or without a potentially fatal illness) means that it's important to live every moment fully. Leavitt (Living Other Lives) has a talent for creating believable characters whose problems touch the reader's heart. With its tug-at-the-heartstrings plot, this novel sometimes teeters on the brink of melodrama, but Leavitt is a good enough writer to keep it from dissolving into suds. Recommended for all public library fiction collections.--Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Lively melodrama from the author of six family-centric novels (Into Thin Air, 1993, etc.) in the vein of Jacqueline Mitchard or Jane Hamilton. Middle-aged Manhattan book-designer Gary Breyer-orphaned as an infant and raised by a now-dead aunt-watched all his friends marry, breed, and move to the suburbs. He'd resigned himself to a solitary life until he meets Molly Goldman, a redheaded New Jersey schoolteacher (and fellow orphan). After a whirlwind romance, the two marry. But a few days after giving birth to their first child, Otis, Molly's uterus begins to fill with blood and she grows increasingly ill, falling into a coma. Gary takes a leave from work, hires a German nurse (a well-drawn character who provides much-needed comic relief), and begins sifting through medical Web sites in search of information about Molly's condition. As her illness continues seemingly without end, Gary's slimy boss fires him. Gary, in turn, fires the expensive nurse and begs Suzanne, Molly's estranged older sister (a beauty who ran off to California with her rock musician boyfriend when she was 17), to come back east and help take care of Otis. Destitute and friendless, Suzanne readily agrees. When she arrives, however, she behaves like a stubborn teenager: incessantly smoking around Otis, refusing to perform even the simplest household tasks, letting the baby cry endlessly. Then she and Gary spend the night together, caring for the colicky Otis, and Suzanne develops affection for both the son and his father (who has taken a job as a night watchman). Slowly, she evolves into the model aunt and sister-in-law-except that, unfortunately, she's developed a fierce crush on Gary.Realistic,well-plotted, eminently readable portrait of a family in crisis-and an improvement on Leavitt's usual formula.

Kirkus Reviews