The Relatives: A Novel

Written by Camilla Gibb

Narrated by Mikaela Davies, Nathalie Toriel, Matthew Edison and Christina Tannous

From the renowned author of Sweetness in the Belly, The Beauty of Humanity Movement and This Is Happy, comes a bold, urgent and richly imagined novel about what it means to be a family in our modern world.

Lila is on a long, painful journey toward motherhood. Tess and Emily are reeling after their ugly separation and fighting over ownership of the embryos that were supposed to grow their family together. And thousands of miles away, the unknown man who served as anonymous donor to them all is being held in captivity in Somalia. While his life remains in precarious balance, his genetic material is a source of both creation and conflict.

What does it mean to be a family in our rapidly shifting world? What are our responsibilities to each other with increasing options for how to create a family?

As these characters grapple with life-altering changes, they will find themselves interconnected in ways they cannot have imagined, and forced to redefine what family means to them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doubleday Canada
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780385695497

Reviews for The Relatives

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is an exploration of families in two aspects. First, how does the family we had when we were young affect our choices as adults. Secondly, what does "family" mean to us as we become able to build our own lives.

Three characters drive this book. Lila, who was adopted as a child, is now a social worker who becomes inappropriately emotionally involved in the life of a young girl she is assigned to help. Her feelings about motherhood are driven by her loss of her own mother. Tess never wanted children, but her partner Emily longs for a child. Adam, their anonymous sperm donor, is a government agent recently kidnapped in Somalia as the story opens. These characters are all extremely well drawn. They are flawed, complex and so real!

This is a great story and one that has me reflecting on its themes several days after finishing the book.