If You Could See Me Now

As a young college student in 1964, novelist Michael Mewshaw was emotionally scarred when his pregnant girlfriend put her baby up for adoption. Three decades later, a young woman who may (or may not) be his daughter turns up, reopening those old wounds. The biological mother, now a prominent Republican, is less eager to revisit her past, but that doesn’t prevent Mewshaw from dragging her into his catharsis. If You Could See Me Now begins as a complex study of adoption but turns into a bitter harangue that includes a bevy of clues so that any reader with a library card can easily determine the mother’s identity. He’s crafted the anti-Rashomon, an intricate story told solely from a singular perspective that fascinates most as a character study of Mewshaw himself.