That Kind of Mother

Rumaan Alam’s “absorbing, frustrating” second novel is “good at throwing curveballs,” said Laura Collins-Hughes in The Boston Globe. His protagonist is a wealthy white woman who ends up adopting her black nanny’s infant, and as the story unfolds, Alam “poses important questions about race, privilege, and the nature of family.” Though he doesn’t always convincingly inhabit his female characters’ minds, he’s very good at capturing the unexpected ways that families evolve.