By Jessie Tu
FICTION
The Mix-Up
Kylie Ladd
Penguin, $34.99
If Kylie Ladd’s characters came together to make a documentary about their lives, the film could be called The Unfortunates.
Her novels centre on people who have been subjected to unspeakable pain, grief and wildly unexpected scenarios. In her latest, sixth novel, The Mix-Up, two middle-class couples, each having endured gruelling health battles to become parents, discover that their babies are, in fact, not their own: there was a mix-up in the laboratory on the day they had their embryo transfers.
It’s the stuff of nightmares that has happened to couples in real life. Will they switch their children after 14 years? Or continue to live as they are?
Ladd begins the story from one of the teenager’s perspectives. Ammy, the (apparent) child of Kelsey and Raf, who are now separated, is a thoughtless, impulsive menace, too cool for school, fiercely determined to butt heads with anyone who gets in her way.
Her insatiable itch to grow up wreaks havoc on her mother’s sensitive temperament. A kindergarten teacher who is “undone” by children, Kelsey’s overprotective nature is constantly tested by her only child, who was once desired so maddeningly that her mother had endured multiple rounds of IVF, putting her and her former husband into decades-long debt. As Ammy enters her 15th year, mother and daughter become increasingly and brutally unalike in their temperaments, opinions and appearances.
Author Kylie Ladd.
The unexpected (and unwanted) day of reckoning comes after Ammy’s science project, involving, predictably, a family tree and genetic testing kit, reveals the truth. The child shares none of her parents’ DNA. How does this enormous, shocking new information change the way you see yourself?
Enter Zac, a short, introverted Minecraft enthusiast who has also felt different from his domineering father. Unlike Nathan, a blue-chip alpha male who adores corporate golf days, Zac is a sweet, gentle, dedicated student, a fourth-generation Bayside Grammar boy who is struggling under the legacy left by his once star student father.
Well, apparent father. For the past 14 years, Zac has been living as the son of Nathan and his wife, Shona, an elite power couple drawn from the pages of Architectural Digest. They’re perfect Brighton types accustomed to being envied by outsiders. As their son, Zac has sadly not inherited his parents’ seemingly effortless roaming through the world. His universe is turned upside down after his parents reveal to him that he is, in fact, not their biological son.
What does true parenthood mean? Biology or social nurture? Who is a child’s real mother? Is blood thicker than water? Is blood even relevant in such unique cases? The Mix-Up is a compassionate portrayal of the fallout of such devastating truths, carving the emotional journeys of both sets of adults and their teenaged offspring with a poised sensitivity and swift pacing. Ladd takes care to swat away any unnecessary monologue, preferring instead to focus on the actions each individual takes.
The story unravels each characters’ worst tendencies and kindest qualities, ultimately painting an unguarded portrait of how an immense fiasco from decades earlier can become “a cancer that is devouring both families”.
Some of them deny its severity, while others look at it squarely in the face. This is a human story of people within family units trying their best to negotiate and manage a new domestic order while dealing with hurt feelings. Once-repressed fears mean they can no longer skirt along the surface in a happy pretence.
Especially when they decide to combine their families to protect their intimate histories while building new memories. It’s a Brady Bunch scenario of sorts, a modern family, a confused group of people who bravely decide to turn an unfortunate medical mistake into an expansive, inclusive existence together.
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