A charming, relatable memoir on adoption, love, and identity.
After discovering that she was adopted, debut author Duren set out to find her birth mother and uncover her biological roots.
From a very young age, the author suspected that she might not be biologically related to her immediate family members. She looked different from them, for one thing, and often found herself emotionally isolated from her mother and brother. She occasionally asked her parents if she was adopted and they always waved off the question—until one day, her father simply admitted that she was. She was 15 at the time, and from that day forward, she was committed to finding her biological mother. She chronicles her long journey in a story involving decades-old records, helpful friends, unsupportive family members, old yearbooks, two private detectives, multiple phone calls with people who knew more than they admitted, and years of patient waiting. Along the way, Duren reveals bits and pieces of her own personal life, which included three marriages, four children, a brief time living in Germany, a successful career as a photographer, and a lifelong love of theater. In her quest, she encountered encouragement and discouragement from various parties, ultimately building her own support system, comprised of friends who loved her and were equally invested in her search. Duren writes somberly about serious events in her life (her adoptive parents’ aging, the slow pain of waiting for news, chasing dead ends), but her quirky sense of humor emerges throughout her memoir as she muses on her own insecurities and fantasies. She jokes about imaginary best-case and worst-case scenarios, writes silly captions for photographs (such as one that compares her haircut and her son’s), and recounts her childhood memories with fondness and amusement. In writing this delightful memoir, Duren ultimately explores the difference between the family we’re given and the family we choose. Readers will be left feeling satisfied by the hopeful ending to her search.
A charming, relatable memoir on adoption, love, and identity.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9982794-2-8
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Word Hermit Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
PERSPECTIVES
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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