The New York Times
Deborah Schupack's strange, unsettling, lyrical novel defies simple paraphrase. Driven by rage — at her perpetually absent husband, at the willfulness of her teenage daughter, at her formerly asthmatic son (or, rather, his replacement), who seems not to need her — Meg journeys through a sort of psychological fifth dimension, the internal world being the one she sees. Motherhood with all its contradictions has rarely been shown so nakedly. — Matthew Flamm
Beth Kephart
As this debut novel begins, an eight-year-old boy sits on the back of an otherwise empty school bus, unwilling to get off and not altogether recognizable to his bewildered mother, Meg. Sure, the child almost looks like Meg's asthmatic son Charlie, but something indescribable is different—some sheen in the skin, some nascent self-confidence or coolness. Charlie seems polite and even pleased to see Meg, but still he sits, implacable. What is Meg to make of this, and what are readers supposed to assume? Is this Kafka or a fairytale or just the distorted sensibility of an unhappy and poorly rested mother? Schupack's premise—that self-involved parents might not be capable of recognizing their own children—is an engaging one, and there are some stretches of lovely writing throughout the book. But too often the characters come across as mechanical and flat, and the dialogue feels clipped, constrained.
Publishers Weekly
One afternoon, Vermont housewife Meg discovers that the boy on the school bus outside her door is almost, but not quite, her eight-year-old son, Charlie. It's a typical X-Files scenario, but in the hands of first-time novelist Schupack it becomes an acute psychological study of alienated ex-urban family life. Meg's panic recalls her aloof, restless husband from his job in Canada and her bratty, rebellious teenage daughter from boarding school, but neither they nor the local sheriff nor the family doctor can verify Charlie's authenticity. Unlike the old, asthmatic Charlie, who was both an emotional anchor and a ball-and-chain to Meg, the new Charlie is more mature, robust and adventurous, threatening to follow his father and sister out of the house, untether Meg from her caretaker role and force her to confront her own thwarted ambitions. Schupack writes in a restrained, naturalistic style. Her characters are sharply observed, and she has an ear for familial bickering and the idioms of male withdrawal and teen exasperation ("What's so wrong with the little creep now?"). The central figure of Charlie is not as well realized; he is less a character than a symbol of familial estrangement and a projection of Meg's dread of the confines of marriage and motherhood. As a plot engine, the mystery of Charlie's identity sometimes feels forced (can't someone run a DNA test on this kid?), but the predicament allows Schupack to draw a subtle and chilling portrait of that much scrutinized figure, the postfeminist wife. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
The publisher is comparing this first novel to the works of Russell Banks (it's set during a gloomy, small town New England winter) and Shirley Jackson (there's slowly building mystery and dread). But Schupack, who has taught writing at Yale and the New School University, offers an utterly original work that preys on a fear that every mother must experience at least once when looking at her son or daughter and thinks, "This is not my child." It's a terrifying and bewildering thought and for most only fleeting-but for Meg, a failed painter and stay-at-home mom in Vermont, it isn't. When eight-year-old Charlie doesn't get off the school bus one afternoon, Meg gets on. Dismayed to find a boy in her son's place who appears nearly identical to Charlie, she doesn't know what to do. After a standstill so long that the local sheriff becomes concerned and notifies the boy's father at work ten hours away in Canada, Meg takes the boy home. To compound the problem, the new Charlie is an improved version: he's no longer asthmatic, is anxious to please and willing to eat, and yet he's still greedy for the attention of his father and older sister, Katie. Will they accept Charlie because they believe in him? The answer is fascinating. For all fiction collections.-Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A mother can't understand why the young boy in her house no longer seems like her son-and with this unexpectedly impressive debut novel of psychological mystery, Schupack boldly announces her presence at the table of writers who deserve to be heard. In a small Vermont town, Meg Landry is a stay-at-home mother whose husband, Jeff, is working out of town more often than not and emotionally MIA even when he's around. A painter who's mostly given up, Meg is simply facing the ennui of life with Charlie, her asthmatic eight-year-old. Then one afternoon she's called out to the school bus to deal with the small boy sitting in back who by all rights should be Charlie, but, as far as Meg can tell, is not. After a long, tense period, Meg walks off the bus and back to her house with the child who seems to be her son but at the same time is vastly different. Jeff is summoned back home from his worksite in Canada, whereupon he commences to pace, find things to fix, and declare that he's pretty sure that boy is Charlie. Even Katie, Meg's angry teenager back from boarding school, who is at first casually dismissive of her little brother, eventually becomes scared by this short stranger who doesn't seem to know anything about their family or himself and who chills them all with his preternatural calm. Schupack wisely avoids the Children of the Damned route and resists the urge to focus too much on the boy-or the question of who or what he might be-and pays attention instead to the fragile mental health of Meg, a bored housewife uncomfortable in her own skin. Etched with clear prose that recalls Doris Lessing at her most haunting. An astounding and horrific first novel.
