Scissors

Laura Lindstedt’s impressive novel Scissors succeeds in developing from a description of contemporary adoptive parenthood and motherhood into a discourse on fundamental issues.

Scissors is a story of a woman, Maria, who adopts a little girl from China. Great expectations and the desire to love turn to inadequateness before the child’s blank stare. What happens if a child doesn’t respond at all? Or if the mother and the child are afraid of each other?

Lindstedt writes boldly about a woman’s life and the need to love one’s child. The novel discusses sensitive matters that are not often talked about: the distance between child and parent, the fear of failure and finally a mother’s mental instability.

Scissors manifests both a great command of language and structure and a skillful ability to manipulate plot.