Puppet Child

I would recommend this to anyone looking for a book to get immersed in. It will definitely engage you and get you to think about what could (and sometimes does) happen in our court system.


Very insightful look into the horrors of child abuse   February 3, 2003
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Talia Carner in Puppet Child has given us an exceptionally realistic insight, albeit not a very pretty one of a mother's journey into hell. We are caught up in the trials and tribulations she faces as she attempts to protect her daughter from her husband and the childs father who is a sadistic pedophile. We as witnesses to these events which are unfolding before our eyes are powerless to intervene. We find ourselves unable to comprehend the unfairness of it all. Yet, this scenario is replayed each and every day . Just spend a day in the corridors and court rooms of our family courts and view first hand these horrors.
Read Puppet Child. Mrs. Carner 's writing is graphic and yet poetic in its content and extremely insightful. Her verbal pallette is wonderful. She brings out to us in detail the childs great fear of her father and the very real reasons for this fear and how it impacts on this poor childs very being.
I will look forward to her next novel.


Powerful and Compelling.....   January 21, 2003
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Rachel Belmore thought she had the perfect life. She was married to the very handsome and charismatic surgeon, Wes Belmore, and was living in the lap of luxury on New York City's Fifth Avenue. She loved her high powered job with a world famous fashion magazine, and as if that were not enough, all her dreams had come true with the birth of their beautiful baby daughter, Ellie. But that perfect world exploded and crumbled in just seconds, the night she discovered her husband molesting Ellie in her crib. For three years, now, Rachel's been fighting a protracted legal battle in a system that almost always seems stacked against her, bent on protecting and restoring the reputation of Wes, not saving her young daughter's life..... From the harrowing prologue to the final climactic chapter, Talia Carner's stunning and well researched, debut novel tells a tense and powerful story in excrutiating and vivid detail. Her intricate plot is eloquently written, filled with well developed, true to life, intriguing characters, and touching, often painful, riveting scenes. Ms Carner indepth knowledge and expertise in child abuse and the flawed, family court legal system adds real credibility to her story and makes this novel stand out. Puppet Child examines the uncomfortable truths about child custody and our ability, within the law, to protect children from further abuse. This is a marvelous and compelling debut that shouldn't be missed. Kudos to Ms Carner!


Spellbound by Puppet Child   January 11, 2003
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I too am spellbound by Puppet Child. I kid you not -- this book should be must reading for every person (including the judges in our courts) who demand to look behind the closed doors of a justice system -- where the "blind" option indeed disfigures so many lives. And the victims -- so much needless anger, despair and pain. What a pity. Puppet Child's suspenseful storyline flows so easily -- I was into this book immediately. Carner really did her homework. When's the movie?


The Truth Revealed   January 9, 2003
I read this book over the holidays and found it riveting, realistic and powerful. They say non-fiction includes facts, fiction includes truth. By giving readers Ellie and Rachel, real portraits of unwitting vicitms of the system, the author gives her readers a real sense of how awful the family courts really are. Similarly, by giving us McGillian she does more to explain judicial arrogance, and manifestations of complete discrection (and the dangerous effects of politics and political pressure on the judicial system), than any academic explanation could.