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BIRTHMOTHERS

WOMEN WHO HAVE RELINQUISHED BABIES FOR ADOPTION TELL THEIR STORIES

Candid, often moving report on the experiences of some 70 women who gave up their babies for adoption. Jones (Stepmothers, 1992—not reviewed) uses questionnaires and in-depth interviews to explore what relinquishing their children means to birthmothers and how the experience has affected their lives. Working with a small, nonrandom sample, the author doesn't pretend to present the definitive birthmother portrait: Her subjects are largely mainstream, emotionally stable women who have come to terms with their experience. All gave up their babies at least seven years ago, some more than twenty years ago. Each of the stories—told pseudonymously and usually verbatim—begins with the discovery of the pregnancy and includes the decision-making process (in which the mother often feels left out), delivery, relinquishment, and return to so-called normal life, which for most of these women means marriage and children. Denial, grief, and anger are common, as are nightmares, phobias, and depression; some women report suicide attempts, abusive relationships, and abandoned careers. When these birthmothers tried to find their children, the outcomes were often disappointing and sometimes even disastrous. While acknowledging that her sample is hardly scientific, Jones constructs a profile of the ``birthmother syndrome,'' which she sees as having an underlying theme of loss and hopelessness. She favors changing adoption structures to provide a place for birthmothers in the children's adoptive families—an arrangement that, she says, would give them ``legally protected open acknowledgement, recognition, and dignity.'' What it might do to the families is not carefully examined. A touching portrayal of the plight of women forced to give up their babies—although Jones's solution seems inadequately considered. (First serial to New Woman)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993

ISBN: 1-55652-192-8

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993

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THE ESCAPE ARTIST

A vivid sequel that strains credulity.

Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.

At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.

A vivid sequel that strains credulity.

Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019

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AN INVISIBLE THREAD

THE TRUE STORY OF AN 11-YEAR-OLD PANHANDLER, A BUSY SALES EXECUTIVE, AND AN UNLIKELY MEETING WITH DESTINY

A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.

When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.

 

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011

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