This was a tough one for me to rate. I liked it quite a lot for the first half and then when Grandpa Ivan died it suddenly came crashing down and everybody in the book (except Pippa) started to drive me nuts.

I found Anna uptight and miserable as a character. Emily even more so and I was incredibly tired of her self-pity over her parents. I wanted to know more about the Isis family and less about Zoe's medical care. Zoe and her condition seemed completely unneccesary to the story, BTW.

Could Marge have been any more of a caricature? And Gina seemed like she'd become a big player but then didn't.

I suppose this is how real life works - not everybody is an important player in a story even though they are around while it's happening -- but this is a novel and I want everything in the book to matter.

I found the pie-in-the-sky ending totally absurd. ( )

Intrigued by the plot of young pregnant woman under “house arrest” because her previous child had died during a cult ritual becomes muddled in the labyrinth of dysfunction relationships. Nurse and home care agency only slightly believable. ( )

Emily is a home health nurse. She is in her early 30s, but is showing signs of being a bit of an old maid. She is assigned to look after Pippa, a young woman, who is on house arrest, due to charges stemming from the death of her young daughter. To complicate matters, Pippa is living in a cult-like community, which may have also contributed to the toddler’s death. Emily finds herself drawn into Pippa’s unusual world and an unlikely friendship begins to blossom.
This is solid first novel, centering around Emily, although the story does switch POVs from several different characters, giving the story a stronger and richer perspective. I found this book fresh and engaging. ( )

This is an unusual and surprising read that slowly heats to a boil; by the last third, I was having trouble putting it down! Meeropol's characters are well-drawn and sympathetic; she creates psychological complexity and back-story in precise, elegant strokes, while never losing sight of her plot. Nicely paced and nuanced. A satisfying and thought-provoking story that allows us to examine the ways in which we judge each other and ourselves, and the circumstances under which true compassion can be possible. ( )

I'm a sucker for first novels. Most of my reading friends know that, and will often send me premiere works of an author to sample. House Arrest would have appealed to me for that reason alone, but it was the writing, and the shaping of characters and story that won me.

This debut novel explores aspects of friendship that often are ignored. The two main characters come from completely different backgrounds, and each are reluctant to trust another individual, to move out of the comfort zone each has carved out of their worlds. These two women, a home health nurse and a young woman, pregnant with her second child, on home arrest after the suspicious death of her first child in a cult related activity, are thrown together by circumstance. They forge a bond that forces them each to struggle, grow, trust and forgive, in order to move forward in their lives -- a friendship born from diversity. Each examines their inner scale that balances right and wrong, sorting the moral, legal, ethical, and humane issues that ultimately both bind them together and free them.

I have to 'fess up. Ellen Meeropol is one of my dearest friends. We haven't been in as close touch as we once were, since we both retired from nursing, but she still remains in the count when someone asks me to think of my closest friends. I've read poetry and prose of hers in the past. What impressed me beyond the story was how she has grown since I last read her work. She has shaped and tempered her craft. She is a writer.

Knowing Ellen personally, it was interesting to see how she entwined her own passions for truth, political activism and her career of nursing into the story. We met as nurses working with children who were born with Spina Bifida and their families. Even in that work, she was an advocate and activist for children with disabilities and for people with latex allergies. We collaborated on many projects to increase awareness of latex allergy, and she was the person who first recognized the symptoms of my own illness. (Good nurse that I am, I ignored her, and almost died for my efforts. Moral: Always listen to Elli.) Today, twenty years after we first began increasing awareness of this allergy, it is still not well known, and there are still people, even in the medical profession, who do not take it seriously. I think were they to read this story, it might just make the difference.

The ultimate appeal of this book, though is with the characters. It is easy to imagine meeting any one of these people, with their beliefs, self-doubts and search for answers: Emily wondering if she'd missed signs of an infection in a patient, Gina's curiosity at meeting a celebrity patient, Sam's love for his daughter, Pippa's examination of the world she had taken for granted. Decisions are not always easily defined, but the reader is carried along completely as these characters move through the maze of issues which confront them. Every one of us has a story to tell. House Arrest allows us to glimpse the tales of some ordinary people who transcend the every-day, and reach toward the extraordinary.

(This unusual and thought provoking story is due out in February 2011) ( )