cover image Being Lara

Being Lara

Lola Jaye. Morrow, $13.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-206934-4

Jaye's newest (after By the Time You Read This) is a stunningly emotional tale of adoption from the perspectives of the three women involved%E2%80%94Nigerian birth mother Yomi; white, British, adoptive mother Pat; and Lara, the daughter struggling to discover who she is. When Yomi, the wife of a village chief, becomes pregnant by another man, she decides to give the little girl%E2%80%94Omolara%E2%80%94up for adoption to avoid scandal. After once-successful pop-star Pat has a miscarriage and can't get pregnant again, she and husband Barry journey to the Motherless Children's Home in Nigeria and return to England with a new daughter. Raised by loving parents, but teased as an outsider throughout her childhood, Lara nonetheless grows up to be a strong, if emotionally reticent, young lady. At her 30th birthday party, however, a mysterious woman in traditional Nigerian dress arrives, and Lara is flung into a whirlwind of illuminating and distressing self-discovery, as she comes to terms with a heritage she's never known, while more fully embracing the one she was raised in. Jaye does an outstanding job of laying out a complex story, while giving each character an honest voice with which the concomitant fears and hopes of adoption are brilliantly expressed. (Mar.)