THE MUM HUNT

A presumptuous, hip, young French au pair caring for motherless Esmie, 11, and Matt, 15, decides to orchestrate a match-making campaign by encouraging the children to place an ad in the newspaper personals column. Esmie’s first-person narrative conveys a yearning for the mother she never knew and an acceptance that the antidote to her father’s strict, overprotective parenting should be a new wife for him and stepmother for her. Debut novelist Rees has created a scenario full of wishful thinking couched in the not-quite-mischievous predicament that au pair Juliette devises for both father and children. The ad is answered, a clandestine meeting is arranged, and unpredictable circumstances occur with an all-too-convenient, almost unbelievable ending. Rees’s psychiatric background is a little too evident in her British style as several conversations between the 21-year-old au pair, children, and father portray some incredibly insightful analysis of the family’s situation. Moderately intriguing, yet ultimately unconvincing. (Fiction. 10-12)