Invisible Threads (review)

Naomi gave birth to a baby when she was only sixteen and then gave the little girl up for adoption; Carrie-Anne, now sixteen herself, is at dagger points with her adoptive mother and decides it's time to finally meet her birth mother, Naomi. Narration alternates between the two: Naomi describes the dysfunctional family life and the longing for attention that led her to an unintended pregnancy and the relinquishing of her baby, while Carrie-Anne chronicles the road trip with friends to find a now-grown Naomi. Though the adoption story occasionally falls short (the book pulls its punches by avoiding a connection between Carrie-Anne and her biological mother, and she discovers the fact of her adoption through the hoary cliché of happening upon her birth certificate), this is more a story of two sixteen-year-olds attempting to define themselves and struggling with their respective mothers, and it's a knowing and authentic portrait of that battle. Naomi's alternation between being the center of her mother's world and an obstacle to her mother's romantic happiness is portrayed with poignant sympathy, but there's a harder, more challenging edge to Carrie-Anne's narration: her resentment of her mother's power over her ("She cuts me and has absolutely no idea how I bleed") and her delight in exerting power in return ("I couldn't explain the triumph I felt at making my mother cry") are coolly authentic, and it's evident that her interest in her biological mother is a reaction to, not a cause of, her conflict with her mother. Carrie-Anne's trials with her friends—her best female friend is more concerned with being cool than with being caring, cheerfully cheating on her boyfriend with a boy whom Carrie-Anne adores—believably precipitate her reconsideration of her family relations while still remaining realistically important. This British import will find an audience not just with adoptees but with any teen reader undergoing a rocky differentiation from a parent.