The Orphan Game: A Novel

This is the orphan game that Maggie Harris, her brother Jamie, and her sister Alison used to play when their troubled parents left them alone. Now these three must navigate not only their own fractured home life but the convulsive '60s as well. Set in Southern California, Ann Darby's debut novel juxtaposes domestic trauma against the relentlessly sunny backdrop of the suburban American dream--a dream, we soon learn, gone woefully awry. Jim Harris, a developer, is constantly sinking money into schemes that should make him rich but don't; his wife, Marian, barely keeps the family financially afloat working as a seamstress. Maggie, the oldest child, falls in love with her high school sweetheart, who is bound for Vietnam, and becomes pregnant. Before she can break this news, however, a fight erupts--with tragic consequences--and Maggie flees to the home of her mother's eccentric aunt, Mrs. Rumsen. Here she gradually realizes that even after you've blasted your life to smithereens you can still "gather up bits and pieces of the wrecked past and make something fine of them."

Darby tells this story from several different perspectives; though Maggie is the main narrator, we also hear from her mother, Mrs. Rumsen, and occasionally her brother and sister as well. The Orphan Game draws a telling portrait of a family already in crisis, living in a nation on the brink of one. Though Vietnam looms in the background, in this novel, at least, the real battlefield is in the characters' own backyard. --Margaret Prior

Product Description
Beautifully written, wonderfully observed, and
deeply felt, Ann Darby's haunting first novel
marks the debut of an important voice
in women's fiction.

The Orphan Game tells the story of a young woman's passage from the troubled family she's longing to escape to the "family" she struggles to create when she is forced into an early adulthood.

As the war in Vietnam escalates and as brush fires are blackening the California foothills, the Harris family shatters and its members are driven to find new ways to live with one another. With an intimacy immediate and true, The Orphan Game portrays the powerful love that not only can bind a family, but can also break it apart.

Set in a quiet Southern California town in 1965, a town where the rules of the fifties haven't quite departed and the new mores of the sixties are fast encroaching, this rueful tale is told in the intertwined voices of three women: Maggie, the young woman struggling to define herself; Marian, the mother who must relinquish her; and Mrs. Rumsen, the childless great-aunt who cares for Maggie when her mother can't. As each woman tells her tale, it becomes clear that each has, in her own way, played the orphan game--taken the risk to leave home, to claim her life, and, above all, to be loved.

It is a story about one teenage girl and her family in 1965 California. The author captures the time excellently. It is also the story of a family and the trials and tribulations every family faces. I was quite surprised at some of the plot twists.

I really liked this book and the only thing keeping me from giving it 5 stars is the fact I would have liked a more in depth character development of all the key players. It was an excellent read though and I would read another by Ann Darby.


Wonderful storytelling.   May 15, 2002
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

This book is so well-written that it is hard to believe it is a first-novel. Ann Darby writes about the sixties in such a way that the reader is placed back in time--I felt like I was growing up all over again. It is ultimately the story of the young Maggie and her family, told at times in the voice of different characters; her mother, her great-aunt, sister, and brother. It's more than a coming of age novel, at times her family comes apart, then comes back together. Ann Darby is a writer I feel lucky to have found, and I am looking forward to her second novel.


Too slow   July 22, 2001
 3 out of 8 found this review helpful

I wanted to like this book, since the writers' ability to set the place and time were excellent, but the characters were not very likeable or interesting. You knew from the beginning that Maggie would get pregnant and that her boyfriend wouldn't marry her and her parents would go nuts. So, since nothing surprising happens, it really mattered that the characters would make you care, and they just didn't. I found myself wishing that the book would just end, and eventually, it did.


Portrayal of an Era   April 26, 2001
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

The Orphan Game was an interesting portrayal of American life during the early 1960's, before the societal shift of that era really occurred. Two fundamental themes are developed through the two central, and most-developed, characters of this book. Maggie, a 16-year-old, becomes pregnant just as her boyfriend ships off to Vietnam. She must grow up fast, and learn to deal with life on her own, without her family. Her father, Jim, is obsessed with the American dream and making life good for his family. These two characters obviously come into conflict, and it is through this conflict that Maggie eventually develops her own voice, outside of her family and her boyfriend.

Darby's writing is phenomenal, and the writing dense and evocative. Overall, the book is well recommended.