Book Review--Blessings, by Anna Quindlen

I first listened to this book--or part of it--on audio. I checked it out of the library, and the librarian seemed momentarily puzzled; there were just four CDs and she thought maybe there wre supposed to be more. She must have decided there weren't, but it turned out that she was right the first time. I noticed this when the book seemed to end in an odd spot. It seemed that there were more loose ends than there usually are when a book ends. So I checked out the actual book, and of course there was more to it. The only thing is, I would have preferred that it had ended where it did in the incomplete audio version. The real ending was more realistic, but not as happy (not bad, just not as happy).

Skip Cuddy, caretaker of the Blessings estate, finds a newborn baby in the garage one day, left there by a teenage couple. He decides to keep her himself, at first managing to hide her presence from Lydia Blessings, the matriarch of the estate. When Lydia does learn about the baby, rather surprisingly, she decides to help Skip keep her.

Skip doesn't know anything about babies and never had to care for one before, but he learns and does a very good job taking care of the baby, whom he names Faith. Faith seemed to help him turn over a new leaf. Skip had been associated with some rather unsavory characters in the past. He was more of a follower with them than a leader, but Faith and his job at the Blessings estate, which he obtained right after getting out of prison, seem to give him the strength to leave all that behind. Not surprisingly, Lydia had not known about Skip's prision stint when she hired him, but by the time she found out, she had gotten to know him and decided that he was okay. Things go quite well at first, until Skip's past catches up with him.

Anyway, I thought the ending was rather sad, though not without hope. I do really enjoy Anna Quindlen, but sometimes her endings are more realistic than I need, as I tend to like happy endings, even if they aren't as likely to happen in real life.