THE COMFORT OF LIES

Meyers follows up her successful debut novel with this tale of three women and the little girl who ties them all together.

Tia's married lover, Nathan, dumps her after she reveals that she is pregnant with his child. A happily married college professor who lives in the suburbs, Nathan wants nothing to do with her or the child she carries and urges her to have an abortion. Instead, Tia has a little girl and gives it to an upscale couple, Peter and Caroline, who can’t have children of their own. Every year, Caroline sends photos and a brief update on the child’s progress, but this year when Savannah turns 5, Tia decides to contact Nathan. She sends him a letter with the photos in it, which Nathan’s wife, Juliette, intercepts. Although Nathan confessed the affair, Juliette, who is mother to Nathan’s two sons, didn’t know about the baby. Meyers tells the story of Nathan and Tia’s love child and the three women who cross paths in their quest to become more involved in her life. The narrative also includes chapters told from Nathan’s point of view. The stories of the lovelorn Tia, who spends her days working with elderly people who have lost hope, Juliette, the cosmetics mogul, and Caroline, the doctor who is desperately unsuited to be a mother, are chronicled with warmth and depth. Although the reader may find some of the choices made by the characters hard to understand, this is still a believable tale, and the characters crackle with both intelligence and wit.

Meyers’ women resonate as strong, complicated and conflicted, and the writing flows effortlessly in this sweet yet sassy novel about love, women and motherhood.