THAT KIND OF MOTHER by Rumaan Alam

This is not at all the book I expected from an Indian-American man.  Nor would I have expected to enjoy a book that celebrates motherhood, integrity, and doing the right thing.  That is not to say that the main character, Rebecca, is not flawed, because, while she may be a good mother, she is not a particularly good sister/wife/friend.  She is, to say the least, completely absorbed in the poetry she strives to write and the duties that befall her when her beloved Black nanny dies in childbirth.  No shrinking violet, Rebecca can be so wrong about some things when she steadfastly believes that she is right.  One might also say that she is impulsive when she decides to take in an infant Black boy—her nanny’s orphaned child--to raise alongside her white toddler son without consulting her husband.  Then she is particularly naïve about how to raise a Black child and bristles at the stern advice she receives from the Black couple—the boy’s older sister and her husband--who declined to raise him themselves.  The only big mystery is who fathered the nanny’s child, but that question is resolved without fanfare, although, honestly, I was hoping for something scandalous.  What this novel lacks in suspense it makes up for in beautiful writing and one superbly drawn character.  The other characters—husband, nanny, nanny’s grown daughter—are depicted adequately enough that we get a sense of who they are, but, more importantly, who they are to Rebecca and vice versa.