by Julie Ryan McGue ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2021
An engaging, endearing chronicle of a woman’s quest to find her origins.
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In this debut memoir, a woman’s hunt for her birthparents becomes a search for herself.
McGue and her twin sister, Jenny, were adopted as infants. Because it was a closed adoption, they never knew the identities of their birthparents—or their family health histories. When, at age 48, Julie thought she might have breast cancer, the author decided it would be best for her and her children to know what hereditary diseases existed in her family. She got Jenny on board with the search, though McGue worried about offending her adoptive parents. It turned out reassuring her family was the easy part: The hard part was all the secrecy surrounding the adoption. She knew her birth name—Ann Marie Jensen—and that she was adopted through St. Vincent’s Orphanage. Beyond that, the trail went cold. The author’s attempts to track down the “Jensens,” whomever they might be, ended up spanning eight years and involving all manner of obstacles, agencies, and investigators. It was never fully about health records, as McGue admitted to herself: “The desire for medical information involves not just locating my birth parents but also communicating with them, and that realization has led to fantasies about meeting and getting to know them.” What began as a pursuit of genetic information soon became an exploration into the core of the author’s identity. McGue writes in an urgent, fluid prose that captures the highs and lows of her expectations and disappointments. Here, she and her sister meet with Ray the “History Cop”: “Perhaps the negative karma I imagined did follow Jenny and me in from the parking lot, because when we lay out our search history, Ray shakes his head. He can’t help us. Our birth mother’s alias is the problem. We need her real name to proceed.” While not precisely a page-turner, the mystery is a relatable and compelling one, and readers will enjoy learning about the Byzantine mechanisms that underlie the adoption process. McGue and her family are sympathetic and well rendered, and readers will ultimately be as anxious as the author to find out who is waiting at the end of the search.
An engaging, endearing chronicle of a woman’s quest to find her origins.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-050-5
Page Count: 282
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jennette McCurdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2022
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
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The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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