By A. M. Homes
Novelist A.M. Homes lived the first thirty-one years of her life with the knowledge that she was adopted. Though many of the details remained sketchy, one fact that she did know for sure was that her birth parents were not married to each other; her birth father was married to another woman and having an affair with A.M.’s birth mother, making A.M. the mistress’s daughter.
When she finds out that her birth mother is looking for her, A.M. feels an incredible range of emotions. She has always dreamt that her birth parents would be wonderful, loving, smart, and attractive, and that their reunion would finally give her the sense of identity and belonging that she had always missed. However, the real life reunion turns out to be much more complicated and her birth parents are not at all what she expected or hoped for. Ellen is a sad, sickly, extremely needy woman who acts like A.M. is still a young child while Norman is cold, distant and arrogant, treating her more like a secret mistress than a daughter. A.M. writes about her experience as an adoptee balancing two families while searching for her own identity with both style and raw emotion.
The second part of the book, titled Book Two, abruptly changes gears to focus on the author’s genealogical search for her family history and then devotes 15 pages to questions she imagines asking Norman in a courtroom or a deposition, like on Law and Order. Since she never reveals the answers to any of these questions or the outcome of the possible legal dispute, it feels kind of pointless to the reader.
So, I really have to give this book a mixed review: a thumbs up to the first half and a thumbs down to the second part.
Novelist A.M. Homes lived the first thirty-one years of her life with the knowledge that she was adopted. Though many of the details remained sketchy, one fact that she did know for sure was that her birth parents were not married to each other; her birth father was married to another woman and having an affair with A.M.’s birth mother, making A.M. the mistress’s daughter.
When she finds out that her birth mother is looking for her, A.M. feels an incredible range of emotions. She has always dreamt that her birth parents would be wonderful, loving, smart, and attractive, and that their reunion would finally give her the sense of identity and belonging that she had always missed. However, the real life reunion turns out to be much more complicated and her birth parents are not at all what she expected or hoped for. Ellen is a sad, sickly, extremely needy woman who acts like A.M. is still a young child while Norman is cold, distant and arrogant, treating her more like a secret mistress than a daughter. A.M. writes about her experience as an adoptee balancing two families while searching for her own identity with both style and raw emotion.
The second part of the book, titled Book Two, abruptly changes gears to focus on the author’s genealogical search for her family history and then devotes 15 pages to questions she imagines asking Norman in a courtroom or a deposition, like on Law and Order. Since she never reveals the answers to any of these questions or the outcome of the possible legal dispute, it feels kind of pointless to the reader.
So, I really have to give this book a mixed review: a thumbs up to the first half and a thumbs down to the second part.
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