Loverboy

In Victoria Redel's mesmerizing first novel the question of what happens when a mother loves her child too much is deeply and darkly explored. Left with a small fortune by her parents and the cryptic advice it would do to find a passion Redel's narrator sets out to become a mother--a task she feels she can be adequately passionate about. She conceives her son Paul through a loveless one-night stand surrounds him with a wonderful magical world for two--a world filled with books music endless games and bottomless devotion--and calls him pet names like Birdie Cookie Puppy and Loverboy. She wonders Has ever a mother loved a child more? But as life outside their lace curtains begins to beckon the school-age Paul his mother's efforts to keep him content in their small world become increasingly frantic and ultimately extreme by all definitions.<br> In this exquisite debut novel Victoria Redel takes us deep into the mind of a very singular mother exposing the dangerously whisper-thin line between selfless and selfish motivation that exists in all types of devotion.<br>