Publishers Weekly
01/04/2021
In Winter’s smart second novel (after Break in Case of Emergency), a Catholic mother of three seeks greater fulfillment, first by volunteering for a pro-life group, then by adopting a new child. Stirred by a segment on 20/20 about the awful conditions of Romanian orphanages, Jane Brennan flies to Europe and adopts three-year-old Mirela, upsetting the dynamics between her; her husband, Pat; and their biological children. As the mischievous, overactive Mirela demands all of Jane’s attention, 15-year-old Lauren, Jane and Pat’s oldest, struggles with boredom like a “low-grade illness” and falls under the sway of her charismatic, manipulative drama teacher, Ted Smith. Meanwhile, Jane begins participating in demonstrations outside an abortion clinic and finds herself in the limelight for her role in an altercation during a blockade—and for her difficulty with Mirela, who wanders off during the pandemonium. Meanwhile, Ted and Lauren become increasingly intimate, and Jane intervenes in surprising ways. Jane’s narration can be a bit slow and tedious, but the novel takes off when it switches to Lauren’s point of view, building tension as Lauren finds her way through a difficult situation. Though the novel feels a bit schematic at times, Winter’s surprisingly complex characters make it worthwhile. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
"Jessica Winter’s sophomore novel is Franzen-esque in its broad sweep of a Rust Belt family coming down off the highs of mid-century American capitalism. . . . She manages to elegantly and movingly write a novel about faith that doesn’t proselytize or condemn." — Vulture (The Best Books of the Year (So Far))
"I loved this novel. It’s as if Maile Meloy’s Liars and Saints met Susan Choi’s A Person of Interest. It's also a stealth treatise on Catholic mysticism. I loved its moral sophistication and nuance. There are consequences for character choices, which felt like a breath of fresh air." — Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life, finalist for the Booker Prize
"This is a work of precise social realism, in which the intricate tableau of detail offers a backdrop for larger questions about morality, family, and obligation." — Vogue (Best Books to Read in 2021)
“Jessica Winter's The Fourth Child is a brave, complex novel about a mother and her two daughters—and a morally astute exploration of the rewards, limits, and unexpected costs of faith and compassion.” — New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose
“In this compassionate and riveting novel, Jessica Winter raises some of the hardest questions about motherhood, daughterhood, and personhood. In rich and insightful prose, The Fourth Child explores, with ravishing complexity, the inner lives of girls and women.” — Helen Phillips, author of The Need
“Winter elegantly delineates the circumstances that create her characters' belief systems, gently lays bare their foibles and convictions, and shows how even the most rigid ideology can chafe against the messy and tender realities of life.” — Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
“The Fourth Child does something that seems impossible—it probes the Manichean abortion wars through a subtle and arresting family drama. Jessica Winter's portrait of Buffalo during the massive anti-abortion protests of the 1990s is pitch-perfect, and her exploration of the deep sacrifices of motherhood is indelible.” — Michelle Goldberg, New York Times columnist and author of The Means of Reproduction
"A wonder of shape-shifting characters shored up by a political and cultural backdrop that is forever alive with simmering portent. It is a haunting and sometimes prophetic immersion of the ways in which lives can be trapped by the impossibility of what might have once been and the cold truth of what is now. These characters spoke to me in my dreams . . . I could not bear to come to the end, and I find myself wondering, even now, where are they? What might happen? The Fourth Child is, frankly, everything our best novels can hope to be.” — Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
"Intense . . . a vivid portrait of female coming-of-age . . . Winter is a genius. . . . [Her] greatest accomplishment is that she takes on enormous, highly charged topics—faith, the right to choose, female identity—and presents a story without one shred of moralizing. . . . A writer in complete control of her talent." — New York Times Book Review
“Magnificent . . . Winter gives us so much to chew on here—faith, adoption, sexuality, motherhood, abuse, autonomy—and the story warrants taking time to digest, to see how each moment informs and deepens another.” — Buzzfeed
"Expansive stunner." — New York magazine
“Accomplished and rewarding . . . . Where The Fourth Child lives most vehemently is in the character of its problem child, Mirela. To her credit, Ms. Winter has done nothing to soften Mirela’s broken edges, and her rages and demands seem somehow bigger and more real than the world that surrounds her.” — Wall Street Journal
"[Winter] deftly depicts an all-too-human inconsistency: we may hold deep convictions until reality hits close to home. Every page is absorbing; book clubs will love discussing this." — Booklist
"In The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter, Jane becomes pregnant in high school, gets married, and is raising three children by the time most of her friends are finishing college. Years later, she falls in with a pro-life group and adopts a child just as her teenage daughter is coming of age. What happens next forces Jane—and readers—to ask big questions about how firmly held principles can affect a family." — Real Simple
Brandon Taylor
"I loved this novel. It’s as if Maile Meloy’s Liars and Saints met Susan Choi’s A Person of Interest. It's also a stealth treatise on Catholic mysticism. I loved its moral sophistication and nuance. There are consequences for character choices, which felt like a breath of fresh air."
Rachel Louise Snyder
"A wonder of shape-shifting characters shored up by a political and cultural backdrop that is forever alive with simmering portent. It is a haunting and sometimes prophetic immersion of the ways in which lives can be trapped by the impossibility of what might have once been and the cold truth of what is now. These characters spoke to me in my dreams . . . I could not bear to come to the end, and I find myself wondering, even now, where are they? What might happen? The Fourth Child is, frankly, everything our best novels can hope to be.
Vogue (Best Books to Read in 2021)
"This is a work of precise social realism, in which the intricate tableau of detail offers a backdrop for larger questions about morality, family, and obligation."
Vulture (The Best Books of the Year (So Far))
"Jessica Winter’s sophomore novel is Franzen-esque in its broad sweep of a Rust Belt family coming down off the highs of mid-century American capitalism. . . . She manages to elegantly and movingly write a novel about faith that doesn’t proselytize or condemn."
Michelle Goldberg
The Fourth Child does something that seems impossible—it probes the Manichean abortion wars through a subtle and arresting family drama. Jessica Winter's portrait of Buffalo during the massive anti-abortion protests of the 1990s is pitch-perfect, and her exploration of the deep sacrifices of motherhood is indelible.
Helen Phillips
In this compassionate and riveting novel, Jessica Winter raises some of the hardest questions about motherhood, daughterhood, and personhood. In rich and insightful prose, The Fourth Child explores, with ravishing complexity, the inner lives of girls and women.
Lydia Kiesling
Winter elegantly delineates the circumstances that create her characters' belief systems, gently lays bare their foibles and convictions, and shows how even the most rigid ideology can chafe against the messy and tender realities of life.
New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose
Jessica Winter's The Fourth Child is a brave, complex novel about a mother and her two daughters—and a morally astute exploration of the rewards, limits, and unexpected costs of faith and compassion.”
Buzzfeed
Magnificent . . . Winter gives us so much to chew on here—faith, adoption, sexuality, motherhood, abuse, autonomy—and the story warrants taking time to digest, to see how each moment informs and deepens another.
New York Times Book Review
"Intense . . . a vivid portrait of female coming-of-age . . . Winter is a genius. . . . [Her] greatest accomplishment is that she takes on enormous, highly charged topics—faith, the right to choose, female identity—and presents a story without one shred of moralizing. . . . A writer in complete control of her talent."
New York magazine
"Expansive stunner."
Booklist
"[Winter] deftly depicts an all-too-human inconsistency: we may hold deep convictions until reality hits close to home. Every page is absorbing; book clubs will love discussing this."
Real Simple
"In The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter, Jane becomes pregnant in high school, gets married, and is raising three children by the time most of her friends are finishing college. Years later, she falls in with a pro-life group and adopts a child just as her teenage daughter is coming of age. What happens next forces Jane—and readers—to ask big questions about how firmly held principles can affect a family."
Wall Street Journal
Accomplished and rewarding . . . . Where The Fourth Child lives most vehemently is in the character of its problem child, Mirela. To her credit, Ms. Winter has done nothing to soften Mirela’s broken edges, and her rages and demands seem somehow bigger and more real than the world that surrounds her.
Wall Street Journal
Accomplished and rewarding . . . . Where The Fourth Child lives most vehemently is in the character of its problem child, Mirela. To her credit, Ms. Winter has done nothing to soften Mirela’s broken edges, and her rages and demands seem somehow bigger and more real than the world that surrounds her.
Booklist
"[Winter] deftly depicts an all-too-human inconsistency: we may hold deep convictions until reality hits close to home. Every page is absorbing; book clubs will love discussing this."
Francine Prose
Jessica Winter's The Fourth Child is a brave, complex novel about a mother and her two daughters—and a morally astute exploration of the rewards, limits, and unexpected costs of faith and compassion.”
Vogue
"This is a work of precise social realism, in which the intricate tableau of detail offers a backdrop for larger questions about morality, family, and obligation."
Jia Tolentino
The Fourth Child is keen and beautiful and heartbreaking—an exploration of private guilt and unexpected obligation, the intimate losses of power embedded in female adolescence, and the fraught moments of glancing divinity that come with shouldering the burden of love.
Jenny Offill
A beautifully observed and thrillingly honest novel about the dark corners of family life and the long, complicated search for understanding and grace.
Rumaan Alam
This book is remarkable enough as an engaging family saga—mapping lives across decades, teasing out the complexities of being a mother, a daughter, a spouse, a sibling, a person. What I can’t quite get over is how deftly Jessica Winter is able to tackle some of our most contentious issues: faith, reproductive rights, power, and sex. The Fourth Child is a balm—a reminder that it is possible for art to provide a nuanced exploration of life itself.
Chloe Schama
"This is a work of precise social realism, in which the intricate tableau of detail offers a backdrop for larger questions about morality, family, and obligation."
Library Journal
10/01/2020
Having debuted with the well-regarded Break in Case of Emergency, New Yorker editor Winter returns with the story of Jane, committedly Catholic but pregnant in high school and raising three children by her early twenties. Eventually, she becomes involved with a local pro-life group, then adopts a difficult Eastern European child, which disrupts life with her family. With a 40,000-copy first printing.
