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Summary
Summary
Who gets to choose? When a young woman emerges from a lengthy coma-like state she must face the decisions that were made about her body--without her consent--in this powerful novel of reclamation and hope.
Twenty-one-year-old Mallie Williams--scrappy, headstrong, and wise beyond her years--has just landed on her feet following a tumultuous youth when the unthinkable happens: she is violently assaulted. The crime leaves her comatose, surrounded by friends and family who are hoping against hope for a full recovery.
But soon Mallie's small community finds themselves divided. The rape has left Mallie pregnant, and while some friends are convinced that she would never keep the pregnancy, others are sure that a baby would be the only good thing to come out of all of this pain. Who gets to decide? How much power, in the end, do we have over our own bodies? Mallie, her family, and her town find themselves at the center of a media storm, confronting questions nobody should have to face. And when Mallie emerges from the fog, what will she think of the choices that were made on her behalf?
The Opposite of Fate is an intense and moving exploration of the decisions we make--and don't make--that forever change the course of our lives.
Author Notes
ALISON MCGHEE's best-selling novel Shadow Baby was a Today Show Book Club pick, and her picture book for adults, Someday , was a #1 New York Times bestseller. She is the recipient of many fellowships and awards, has three grown children, and lives a semi-nomadic life in Minnesota and California.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
McGhee (Never Coming Back) dwells on bad things happening to a good person in this frustrating tale of morality and sexual assault. Massage therapist Mallie Williams, 21, had what she thought was an idyllic life, sharing a home in upstate New York with her first love, Zach Miller, and her younger brother, Charlie. As children, Mallie and Charlie were abandoned by their widowed mother, Lucia, for a cultlike church, though they've since found a surrogate family in Zach, their neighbor William T., and his girlfriend, Crystal. Then Mallie is raped by a stranger and suffers a coma-inducing head injury. The rape resulted in Mallie becoming pregnant, and she awakens 16 months later, having given birth via C-section and slept through a media-driven battle over what should be done about her pregnancy. Charlie flees to a Pennsylvania boarding school to escape public scrutiny, while Zach weighs in on what should happen with the baby. Sentimental optimism and Mallie's implausible empathy for the rapist undercut this testament of surviving a nightmarish scenario. McGhee's exploration of tough questions misses the mark. (Feb.)
Kirkus Review
The author of Never Coming Back (2017) and Shadow Baby (2000) takes on reproductive freedomand a lot morein her new book.The reader learns two things about this novel's protagonist at the outset. One is that Mallie Williams has been in a coma for months and months. The second is that she's pregnant. From that arresting opening, the story jumps ahead to the moment when, a year and a half after having been raped and beaten, Mallie wakes. She struggles to deal with the knowledge that she has given birth to a child she would not have chosen to keep had she been capable of making decisions for herself. In alternating chapters, we follow William T., a neighbor who has been like a father to Mallie since her own father died. And when Mallie decides to create an identity and a narrative for the unknown assailant who almost killed her, we see that, too. Through William T.'s recollections and newspaper clippings, we learn how Mallie's body became a battleground for the friends and family members who were certain that she would have wanted an abortion and her mother, whose faith makes abortion anathema. McGhee handles this conflict with considerable care and without taking sides. But this novel is about much more than a divisive issue. The courtroom drama and the media frenzy take place, for the most part, offstage. This is, at its heart, a novel about familyincluding chosen familyautonomy, and identity. While most of the novel's characters are carefully drawn, Mallie's mother remains an enigma. She never has the chance to speak for herself, and, without understanding her motivations, some of her choices seem more convenient than believable. Also, it's noticeably odd that Mallie seems to have no friends outside of William T., his girlfriend, and another older neighbor. The only peer with whom this young woman seems to have any connection is her boyfriend.Thoughtful and moving. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Mallie Williams wakes after being in a coma for more than a year. Slowly, she comes to learn that she has become a celebrity in her small upstate New York town. Mallie was assaulted and left for dead. As she recovered, her belly swelled with an unexpected pregnancy. A fight over Mallie's unborn baby ensued, and Mallie's religious mother ultimately won but then she died. Now, Mallie doesn't know where her child is or what she will do next. This is a quiet novel, despite its propulsive questions will Mallie find her baby? How will she cope with her new life? McGhee uses thoughtful language and rich, meditative imagery to paint a picture of one young woman facing a difficult new path ahead. This book pairs well with Christina McDonald's The Night Olivia Fell (2019), a thriller version of a similar concept; Jodi Picoult's A Spark of Light (2018) also explores the gray areas in abortion rights and women's choices. Like its comparable titles, The Opposite of Fate is a prime book-group choice.--Cari Dubiel Copyright 2019 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
In the beginning, a girl lay in a hospital bed in a room with white walls and a single window. Her name was Mallie Williams. She was twenty-one years old. She lay there for many months, months in which people came and went from the white room. Had she been conscious, she would have recognized some of them, the ones she had known most of her life. William T. Jones, her neighbor up the road. Crystal Zielinski, his girlfriend and the owner of Crystal's Diner. Charlie, her younger brother. Lucia, her mother. And Zach, her boyfriend. Others, Mallie would not have known. The doctors and nurses in their scrubs and white coats, stethoscopes slung around their necks, noiseless shoes on their feet. The lawyers. The guardian ad litem. The members of Lucia's church, who gathered around her bedside to pray. The young orderly with the yellow cap, gold earring dangling from his ear, who once a day entered the white room and pushed his mop around the tile floor until it gleamed. Months went by. Most things remained the same in the white room. The doctors and nurses settled into routine and resignation and finally into the kind of watchful resentment that sometimes happens in the face of hope turned hopeless. Until they were banned from the room, William T. and Crystal and Charlie gathered daily around Mallie's bed. So did her boyfriend, Zach. They tried hard, but in the end even Zach's face changed from worry to anger and finally to resignation. Outside the hospital, others also kept watch, protesters carrying signs, trying to sway the decisions of the people within the hospital's doors. In the quiet white room with the double-glazed window, Mallie lay silent and asleep and unaware of the debate and protests and media coverage swirling around her. By all appearances, she was also unaware of the complicated emotions that anguished the people who loved her, the ones who came and went from her bedside. Her dark hair grew long and silky. Her skin softened, its freckles and few lines smoothing and disappearing over time. These changes were small and subtle, noticeable only to the people close to her. It was Mallie's stomach that everyone noticed. Flat and muscled on the night she was admitted, her belly over time mounded itself and became the first thing anyone looked at when they walked into the white room. Such a small thing in the great scheme of the world: new life. But this particular new life was complicated. For a while, it was all anyone who knew her talked about. Sixteen months later William T. Jones Dark birds. That was the second thing Mallie said, when she began to talk again. Her eyes were open and looking toward the window of her room at St. John's. "Dark birds," she whispered, and he quickly followed her gaze. Did her words mean her vision was unharmed, along with her ability to talk? Crows? Grackles? Starlings, maybe. But he saw nothing. Nothing but sky. "I don't see any birds, Mallie." Back and forth she turned her head on the pillow, trying to shake it, maybe. He was holding her hand. Her fingers were so smooth. She was young, only twenty-three, but still. This was what happened when you didn't use your hands; all the roughness went away. Her hands were the hands of a baby, and he remembered her as a baby. He had been in his forties then, a neighbor helping out her widowed mother, Lucia. Over time, he had grown to be a father of sorts to Mallie and her younger brother, Charlie. "Dark birds," she whispered again. Her soft fingers twitched in his. She was trying to tell him something, but what, he didn't know. That was all right. She would find a way. All the long months of waiting, of watching, of hoping that her body would finally recover, had taught him something about time and the nature thereof. What had she said first? "William T." All his life he'd heard his name spoken, yelled, called out by familiar and unfamiliar voices, people who loved him and people who didn't. But had he ever thought about his name until now? Had he ever felt his name as a physical thing, whispering into his body in the voice of someone he'd known since she was a child, someone he'd helped raise, someone he thought of as almost a daughter? "William T." She knew who he was. She was saying his name. Welcome back to the world, Mallie. ---------- When he got home that afternoon he waited on the porch for Crystal. It took her an hour after the diner closed to put it in order for the next day. When her headlights swept across the driveway he stood up. Excerpted from The Opposite of Fate by Alison McGhee All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.