Black and White Book

This spellbinding novel about art, fame, ambition, and family explores a provocative question: Is it possible for a mother to be true to herself and true to her children at the same time? This brilliant examination of motherhood—-a novel that pits artistic inspiration against maternal obligation and asks whether the two can ever be fully reconciled—-explores the limits and duties of family loyalties, and even of love. Gripping, haunting, and psychologically complex.

The New York Times - Erica Wagner

You could say…that the novel's central proposition is trite: how will Clara face the demons of her past? Yet all universal dilemmas—and this is certainly one—could be dismissed as trite. The truth is they face us all, and it is the novelist's job to breathe life into them one way or another, and this is something Shapiro does very well indeed. The strength of this novel is its particularity, its specificity, whether Shapiro is raking over the changes wrought by the years to the Upper West Side or describing Clara's sense of dislocation as she attempts to blend in with the other moms on the Maine island…