A Difficult Read in More Ways than One

I just (finally) finished reading a memoir by a late discovery adoptee. Late discovery means she didn’t learn that she was adopted until she was an adult – in this case in her 30s. Her life is a series of tragedies: while her first marriage is falling apart, her soon-to-be-ex reveals the fact of her adoption. Then her adoptive mother dies. She re-marries and that marriage fails. Her birth mother dies. She is diagnosed with breast cancer. She is in a third love relationship and that partner commits suicide. What helps her to hang on during all this is a combination of therapy and spiritual practices.

I am loath to criticize this book; however, I was hoping for more of the adoption story and specifically about the late discovery aspect of it. Reading felt more like therapy in a book than memoir. But, my biggest complaint was the editing. Actually, I’m not sure the book was edited. At one point she writes of being a vociferous reader. (Yeah, the image that conjures is kind of funny.) And no distinction is made between its and it’s, more often than not the latter was used.

I kept hearing your voices in my head saying “just quit reading it.” That’s hard for me to do with any book, but I feel an obligation to other adoptees to listen to their stories. So, stop for a moment and listen: Adoption can be difficult for all members of the triad. For the person who finds out as an adult that they are adopted, when life is whirling around them at 90 mph, it’s overwhelmingly and cruelly difficult.

Surviving Secrets by Margaret Watson, 2010, A&A Book Publishing.