I had a great time reading this and how it uses the ancestry test as a way to tell the storyline, I was invested in what was going on and enjoyed the overall feel of this storyline. I thought Polly was a so well written characters and I cared about what was happening with her in this book. Anna Quindlen was able to weave a strong storyline and was glad I got to read this

This is a story about love and loss. The family in this story was filled with characters who seemed realistic and relatable. It could be any family in your neighborhood. Anna Quindlen is an author I love to read and this book was no exception.

“More Than Enough” is a beautiful story. The relationships explored and portrayed in the book are so engaging and inspiring — Polly and Mark, Polly and Sally, the book club, Mark’s family, Polly and Garrison, etc. The book has so many great characters; Mark is probably my favorite, but Sarah is a close second.

There are some sad parts of the story, so if books make you emotional, you will likely tear up at times.

I always love a good family story with real characters. The dad with dementia hit especially hard. This was not a disfunctional family, but an honest family with all it's flaws. The main character was real and her relationship with her friends so true. It was a true drama without the melodrama.

Watching Over Her (2023 in French, 2025 in English translation)
By Jean-Baptiste Andrea
Simon & Schuster, 584 pages.
★★★★★

Watching Over Her won a Prix Goncourt for the best and most imaginative work of the year when it was released in France in 2023. It has subsequently won other awards. English readers are now lucky enough to be able to read it, courtesy of an excellent translation by Frank Wynne. It is a long novel, but an amazing one that transports us to the early decades of the 20th century.

It opens in an Italian monastery in 1986 with a man on his deathbed. He is Michelangelo Vitaliani, whose name is nearly as long as he. Vialiani is Italian and made his reputation there, but he was born in France and, much to his chagrin, he was often called “Il Francesa.” He called himself “Mimo,” partly to escape the burden of his first name. (That Michelangelo bore the surname Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni and since his death in 1564, has been considered as perhaps the greatest artistic talent of the Renaissance.) It was also Mimo’s fate to also be a sculptor.

At birth it wasn’t clear that he would much of anything. His family was mired in poverty, his mother was absent, and his father died of venereal disease contracted from a prostitute during World War I, and no other family member wanted Mimo. After all, who wants a dwarf? In the not-quite-modern world of 1916 Europe, folk tales held that dwarves were bad luck. His father left money for his upkeep, but his first “guardian” passed him on to another who put him to work as a stonecutter. One useful thing his father left him was an ability to carve stone and Mimo quickly surpasses the skills of his fellow workers and masters.

Watching Over Her often feels as if it were pulled from The Canterbury Tales. The “her” in the title is Viola Orsini, the bohemian daughter of a proud aristocratic family. They come to each other’s attention when Mimo and other members of “Uncle” Alberto’s crew are working on the Orsini estate. Alberto is not Mimo’s uncle, nor does his dwarfism repulse Viola. As he fashions things in stone, she takes it upon herself to fashion his intellect one book at a time. They rendezvous in a cemetery, as her parents would be appalled to see her spending time with a diminutive tradesman. Those meetings in the graveyard are the genesis of one of the oddest and most unpredictable relationships in recent literature. One could call it lovers-not-lovers.

Reversal of fortunes is a common literary trope, but that between the Orsinis and Mimo is akin to twin glass elevators, with that of the Orsinis descending as Mimo’s ascends. He soon does commissions for the Orsinis, sups at their table, and smokes Orsini cigars. Mimo also sculpts for the church, which makes him one of the most celebrated artists in all of Italy. That’s rather amusing, as Mimo is more sinner than saint. As his purse bulges, much within it is spent on drink and rental women, though he always yearns for Viola. She, in turn, becomes a family pawn as she reaches marriageable age. Think of them as each other’s oddball guardian angel.
Do not, however, expect any old-fashioned happy ending. Where Waiting For Her departs from the aforementioned Canterbury Tales vibe is that the 1920s and into the 1940s were the age of Mussolini in Italy. How does a cash-poor noble family like the Orsinis respond to the often vulgar Il Duce? For that matter, what does a famous sculptor like Mimo do when fascists wish to employ him? To again draw upon a Chaucer, this tale is also a morality play. If you will, events also tends to bring the glass elevators to the same level.

How many books hinge on how the promise of youth is sullied by adult realities? Author Jean-Baptiste Andrea has written something more complex, a novel of great humor, bridled passion, burning ambition, and deep sorrow. In this (sort of) love story, the question of who do you love stumbles over the query what do you love.

Rob Weir

Anna Quindlan is one of my favorite authors who writes of relationships with friends, family, oneself with such great depth. Her teacher character Polly Goodman is an English teacher at a private girls school, with all the feels of that school. Of course she’s in a book club, ( where they don’t read the books) but get together monthly to catch up with each other. Polly is going through fertility issues, and as a joke,her friends get her a genetics test kit. What it reveals sets the story in motion with her parents, brother and husband ( who is a doll!)
Love, loss and gain are the focus of this wonderful novel.

Review - More than Enough by Anna Quindlen 9-6-25 Review by Shirley W.

Polly is the protagonist. She has been teaching at an all-girls school and loves her sweet husband, Mark, who is a large animal veterinarian. She and her 3 friends share everything and as a joke they gave a gift to Polly. A family tree DNA genetic ancestry test kit. Polly has been trying to get pregnant and has had many tests and gone through many ravenous, nauseous and emotional lab results that are not leading anywhere. She doesn’t want to actually take the DNA test and has been holding off on that decision while promising to tell her friends everything when she gets results. Then she receives a message from a young woman who believes they are related because of test results.

Polly’s friends are Jamie, Helen, and Sarah. All have diverse backgrounds and interesting jobs. All get along quite well and are familiar with each other’s families. Polly decides to meet the young woman and discovers more information about her family.

The author, Anna Quindlen has a gift for bringing in personal feelings and describing what every woman wants to know about family and friends with sweet emotions and affection. I recommend this thoughtful book as a real joy to read.

I received a free advanced copy of this book from Random House & NetGalley. This is my
honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an ARC of More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen. I have long been a fan of Ms. Quindlen's books and have read all of her books. This book gave me so much to think about. While it is a pretty short book, it has many layers all pointing back to a central theme, relationships and loss.

The main character in this book, Polly Goodman, is a teacher at a private school and has been in a book club with friends for many years. She and her husband have been struggling (unsuccessfully) to conceive a child. As a joke, her book club friends gift her an ancestry kit. The test comes back with some surprising results and Polly decides to investigate the results. While this goes on, we learn that Polly's father has dementia and is living in a care facility. He has good days and bad. Polly's relationship with her mother, a judge, is strained but her relationship with her inlaws is good. The book also explores several other relationships, her brother, a former spouse, a former student, book club members and the family identified by the ancestry test.

The concept of this book was very interesting and I was excited to have the opportunity to read it. The first part of the book was engaging but about halfway, I started to lose interest and struggled to finish. Despite this, I enjoyed the book and especially the sweet, sweet ending.

I might even give this a 4.5. It was told in such a disjointed, yet interesting way that kept me captivated. The writing was perfect for this story…almost like being inside someone’s random flow of thoughts. But the characters. They were so fully formed that despite the semi short length of the book, made me feel like I knew them so well.

The themes in this book are universal - the major struggles of family, life choices, illness, etc. The struggles are REAL, but also endearing.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. Definitely recommend.

More Than Enough is a truly inspirational novel of love, heartbreak, life and death and every reaction in between. It dwells on longings with disappointments and yet many expectations all culminating in a delightful but also devastating ending as well. Read it to realize the blessings we take for granted in life.

We discover everything there is to know about Polly: She has a tense relationship with her mother who is a judge. Her father is in a home with dementia but she visits and loves him. Her brother is gay and she confides everything in him. Her husband, a vet at the zoo, is too good to be true, never complains. Her book club that doesn’t read the book is composed of Jamie with the big mouth, Helen who I know nothing about, and Sarah who is dying of breast cancer. She’s widow who inherited a fortune and is very generous. Polly is tyring to get pregnant. She does a DNA test and discovers she has a relative–turns out her father is some guy who her mom slept with in her twenties and she had no idea he was the father. It ends with her finally getting pregnant naturally at 42. Sarah dies and leaves her the house. Normally I like Quindlen’s books but this was repetitive and detailed to a fault.

An emotional journey through friendship and family. The protagonist has to deal with the impending death of her closest friend, and keeping it a secret from their friend group. Then there’s her dad’s dementia and decline at the nursing home. The heat test of infertility treatments that aren’t working cause her to question if she should give up on being a mom and finally there is the fraught relationship between her mom and herself and the devastating truth she uncovers that changes her view of who she is. Loved this book!

I received an arc of this book and voluntarily provided a review.

This book was very good and very well written. I am sure a lot of individuals can possibly relate to this book.

Polly Goodman is an English teacher who has career she loves, a happy second marriage to a large animal veterinarian and a wonderful group of friends she meets regularly in a book club. Raised by a nanny, her mother is a high powered judge with a prickly personality but her father is loving and kind, and calls her his “pumpkin pie.” She has a close relationship with her brother Garrison who lives nearby.

At one of their monthly meetings, the book club women give Polly an ancestry test as a joke and the results lead her on a search for lost family. Polly must decide what is important to her and what family truly means.

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen is a novel with complicated family relationships, infertility struggles, aging parents and a family mystery. I loved the literary references and the complicated relationship between Polly and her mother. Object Lessons was one of my favorite books and I was so excited to read this one, I enjoyed it. Thank you so much to Random House for the eARC!

I’ve been reading and admiring Anna Quindlen since the 80s. I even had the pleasure of meeting her a few times. Once I ran into her in the elevator at the New York Times (I worked there for a few years back in the mid-80s). She responded warmly to my hello. I was awestruck to meet her, as many people are when they meet celebrities. I never cared about movie stars or musicians, but writers? Writers are my celebrities. I still recall her chipped nail polish and her utter lack of pretense. These synched up with who she was on paper and made me admire her even more.

Her books aren’t formulaic per se, but they do have recurring themes related to family and the dynamics between parents and adult children, and illness and loss, and female friendships. This book has all of that and Quindlen delivers a beautifully written, tender story as she always, reliably, does.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

School teacher Polly Goodman is the center of this novel. Polly has a loving husband, a zoo vet, but they have been unable to have children despite IVF efforts. Polly shares her story with her three best friends, all members of a book club where the members never read the book assigned. It's just an excuse for them to get together. One member, Sarah, is closer to Polly than the others, but sadly, Sarah is dying of cancer.
Heartfelt moments are abundant in this tale of family and friends. Polly tries an ancestry kit which leads to even more plot points. The novel has little focus as it wanders through these characters lives. But it's more than enough.
Thanks NetGaalley for the ARC.

I was invited by the publisher to review this book. Polly is a high school teacher and a member of a book club, where she finds solace in its members and her ability to share all of her life's issues. These members, along with her husband, are her foundation. One day, the members gift her with a DNA kit, and Polly is matched with someone that she never knew about. Despite this, Polly starts to research her family history, and in the process of this learns how friendships shape our lives.

This is a great book to read if one wants to explore relationships and the different ways they impact our lives. And in what could have been an emotionally heavy book, the author sprinkles some lightness within the pages here and there, so there is a really great balance with this book. This story is told in flashbacks and present day, and I happened to enjoy the present day aspect the best.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

40-something Polly is a revered teacher at a private girls' school while her loving, empathetic husband, Mark, is a large-animal vet at the Bronx zoo. The couple would dearly love to have children, but several rounds of IVF have proved fruitless.

Adding to this heartache, Polly is also watching her father gradually decline in a memory care facility, and coming to the realization that her dearest friend Sarah is not going to recover from a terminal illness.

And then a letter arrives from a teenage girl who thinks she may be related to Polly.


I thought it was clever how Anna Quindlen related Mark's job as a veterinarian to the couple's quest for a baby and the irony that Mark could do so much for animals, yet was struggling with his wife's infertility.

Anna Quindlen is a master of domestic fiction who gently pulls at the heartstrings. By the end of this satisfying novel, I had to do get out the tissues.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for an ARC ebook edition of this novel.

Quindlen never disappoints. She knows how to keep you turning the pages, and the story always flows by quickly. When starting the story, I didn't think a character facing fertility issues would be one i found interesting, but maybe she just creates such nice characters that you want to go along with their lives and find out what happens. She has a tribe of characters here that you will want to get to know.

I had really high hopes for this book, but the first half was a bit slow for me. I found myself wanting it to pick up more and get to the point. It felt like Polly just started telling a story and got distracted, backtracking to past experiences. It felt disjointed in spots, but overall was a very nice story. It picked up in the second half, and by the (somewhat predictable) end, I was bawling.

Definitely worth the read! 3.5 stars rounded up.