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Without a Map
Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at 16. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief.
When he is 21, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father—in her own father's hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall's parents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offers them her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.
When he is 21, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father—in her own father's hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall's parents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offers them her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.
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First published January 1, 2007
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About the author
Meredith Hall
9Ìýbooks99ÌýfollowersMeredith Hall’s awards include a two-year literary grant from A Room of Her Own Foundation, a Pushcart Prize and Maine’s Book of the Year award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Kenyon Review, Good Housekeeping, Five Points and many other journals and anthologies. Her debut novel, Beneficence, was published by David. R. Godine Publishing in 2020. Hall is Professor Emerita in the MFA writing program at the University of New Hampshire, and divides her time between Maine and California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 571 reviews
May 15, 2008
I never give 5's. Some of my favorite books of all time I've rated 4. Out of the 560+ books I have only a handful I've rated 5. This is one of them. This book is one of the most moving, heart-wrenching, beautifully written, evocative books I've ever read. I had tears in my eyes through the whole thing. It's not like this is the most tragic story ever told. Not at all. It's the memoir of a woman who got pregnant at 16 and gave the baby up for adoption. Sad, yes, but nothing too unique. And honestly I would've never picked it up if not for a glowing review by a writer and reviewer I respect a lot. Anyway, the author's writing totally pulls the reader into her pit of loneliness, despair, and longing. I swear I was so wrapped up in the story *I* was feeling lonely and unloved. The prose is excrutiatingly beautiful. It was also amazing to me how little she actually wrote about the pregnancy/adoption itself yet it was always so painfully, heartbreakingly there in every other aspect of her life. Really a perfect book all around, including the length. It's short, 200 pages, and I think for as intense and dark as it is, much longer would have been too much. Just an amazing, superb book and one I'll be foisting on everyone I know.
October 15, 2007
I can hardly conceive of the guts it took to write this book. Meredith Hall was a pregnant 16-year-old in small-town America in the early 1960s. In calm, measured, almost lyrical writing that makes the effect all the more harrowing, she describes her shunning and ostracizing by her friends, her town, and her own parents, who force her to give the child up for adoption. Devastated, she wanders America, Europe, and the Middle East, in an almost trance-like state of isolation. And the reader is devastated along with her.
Yet she emerges with the strength not just to return to the States and start a new family, and not just to reunite with the son she was forced to give up, but to write this stunning book. It's called a memoir, but to me, that sounds too cerebral. This book comes from a place of terror deep in the guts as well the mind, one that we all know and yet fear. Meredith Hall makes that place one of enormous courage.
Yet she emerges with the strength not just to return to the States and start a new family, and not just to reunite with the son she was forced to give up, but to write this stunning book. It's called a memoir, but to me, that sounds too cerebral. This book comes from a place of terror deep in the guts as well the mind, one that we all know and yet fear. Meredith Hall makes that place one of enormous courage.
April 25, 2009
Meredith Hall writes beautifully, and her story is stunning, heartbreaking, and inspiring.
April '09--I'm rereading this memoir in preparation for attending a reading by the author next week, and it's at least as good the second time around.
April 25th--I finished rereading the book about 15 minutes before leaving to hear Meredith Hall speak...I was stirring dinner on the stove with one hand, holding the book in the other, and crying my eyes out. That was the emotional state in which I arrived at her reading, so it's probably no surprise that she made me cry again--once while she was reading about caring for her mother in her last days, and again when I handed her my copy of her book to sign and said, "I have to tell you that you're the reason I applied for the Gift of Freedom award [ --Meredith Hall received the award in 2004 and it allowed her to write this stunning book] last year, and even though I didn't get it, just applying for it let me say, for the first time in my life, that I'm a writer." She jumped up and hugged me, and signed my book "to a fellow writer."
April '09--I'm rereading this memoir in preparation for attending a reading by the author next week, and it's at least as good the second time around.
April 25th--I finished rereading the book about 15 minutes before leaving to hear Meredith Hall speak...I was stirring dinner on the stove with one hand, holding the book in the other, and crying my eyes out. That was the emotional state in which I arrived at her reading, so it's probably no surprise that she made me cry again--once while she was reading about caring for her mother in her last days, and again when I handed her my copy of her book to sign and said, "I have to tell you that you're the reason I applied for the Gift of Freedom award [ --Meredith Hall received the award in 2004 and it allowed her to write this stunning book] last year, and even though I didn't get it, just applying for it let me say, for the first time in my life, that I'm a writer." She jumped up and hugged me, and signed my book "to a fellow writer."
October 12, 2007
**Disclaimer: This review is unabashedly biased, because Meredith was my favorite professor in University... but speaking as objectively as I can, this story is at once beautiful and tragic, a book I would recommend to anyone for both its writing and its story.**
Meredith's undeniable writing talent makes her sad, sad story readable, even beautiful. Though I admit the heaviness of the story, the tradegy of her life made reading slower than I anticipated - I needed to take a break every once in a while and pick up something airier - I feel changed after reading this, like Meredith's own triumphs in the face of so much pain have inspired me to buck up, stand up, and do something with my life. Without a Map reads like a series of essays held together by a common (but sometimes obscured) theme: each essay, each fragment illuminates another step Meredith took toward acceptance, acceptance of the defining events in her life, of the people who come and go, of the winding paths she wandered to find her peace. I recommend this book to anyone who has questioned a choice he or she has made, who has struggled to forgive a loved one for an unforgivable thing, who has felt alone, hopeless, empty, loved, triumphant, or at peace, and of course to anyone who has an appreciation for pure, beautiful, honest writing.
Meredith's undeniable writing talent makes her sad, sad story readable, even beautiful. Though I admit the heaviness of the story, the tradegy of her life made reading slower than I anticipated - I needed to take a break every once in a while and pick up something airier - I feel changed after reading this, like Meredith's own triumphs in the face of so much pain have inspired me to buck up, stand up, and do something with my life. Without a Map reads like a series of essays held together by a common (but sometimes obscured) theme: each essay, each fragment illuminates another step Meredith took toward acceptance, acceptance of the defining events in her life, of the people who come and go, of the winding paths she wandered to find her peace. I recommend this book to anyone who has questioned a choice he or she has made, who has struggled to forgive a loved one for an unforgivable thing, who has felt alone, hopeless, empty, loved, triumphant, or at peace, and of course to anyone who has an appreciation for pure, beautiful, honest writing.
July 30, 2007
Disclaimer: I work at Beacon Press.
BUT, this was one of those books that I couldn't put down, when I see an excerpt in a magazine or even at work I just get drawn in immediately. I'll find myself rereading passages for the eighth time just because I happen to read a full sentence. Meredith Hall is a phenomenal writer, she writes with a passion fitting to this story. The story is her own, she got pregnant at age 16 and was ostracized from her community--her mother kicked her out of her house, her father put her up in his house where he and his wife barely spent time, told her not to go by a window or outside, or even go downstairs for dinner if they had friends over. After the nine months she spent with her growing fetus as her only companion, she doesn't even have the opportunity to see the baby before it is given up for adoption. She tells of her life before and after the birth of her child.
Although the story is tragic and very much her own, this book really made some things hit home for me, like how much women of my generation owe to the generations before us. I know this still happens, but not like it used to, and somehow it was easy to see how a community like Meredith's could have done this to any of the children that lived in it, and it was also easy to see how that community was similar to most white, middle-class, suburban families in 1965. I guess the ability to generalize this experience made the book so chilling to me.
BUT, this was one of those books that I couldn't put down, when I see an excerpt in a magazine or even at work I just get drawn in immediately. I'll find myself rereading passages for the eighth time just because I happen to read a full sentence. Meredith Hall is a phenomenal writer, she writes with a passion fitting to this story. The story is her own, she got pregnant at age 16 and was ostracized from her community--her mother kicked her out of her house, her father put her up in his house where he and his wife barely spent time, told her not to go by a window or outside, or even go downstairs for dinner if they had friends over. After the nine months she spent with her growing fetus as her only companion, she doesn't even have the opportunity to see the baby before it is given up for adoption. She tells of her life before and after the birth of her child.
Although the story is tragic and very much her own, this book really made some things hit home for me, like how much women of my generation owe to the generations before us. I know this still happens, but not like it used to, and somehow it was easy to see how a community like Meredith's could have done this to any of the children that lived in it, and it was also easy to see how that community was similar to most white, middle-class, suburban families in 1965. I guess the ability to generalize this experience made the book so chilling to me.
March 12, 2010
I adored this book, the writing, the honest and the author herself. It's not an easy read but it is truthful--every single page.
April 5, 2014
Okay, a disclaimer. I have a little too much personal experience in the area. 11 years later than this author, I too was a pregnant unmarried teen. While my experience was not exactly the same as the authors, I did experience a lot of the shunning situations she found herself in. So why, at the end of the book did I have a bad taste in my mouth....why did I feel that I could relate and yet.....something was off. Then I realized, this account was completely one sided, seemingly without growth, kind of like a Seinfeld retelling of a life. The author has the right, probably the need, to retell her story in the way she sees fit. It's her story. But I've got to say that because of the acclaim this book received and the way the other woman in my book group gushed over the authors bravery, I feel compelled to point out that no story is ever truly as one sided as this one. It would take me too much time and effort that I don't have at the moment to point out all the examples of this...but there are parts I can mention that if given thought, one must come to the conclusion that the way the story is being told is pure fantasy. And I don't mind fantasy, I just don't want it presented as fact. Specifically, the boat tales, the trek across the world, and the biography of the long lost son are so unrealistically presented, it made me question the total truthfulness of the rest of the book.
Being pregnant and unmarried is a tough situation in any age, especially the early sixties. I know that there were injustices and I believe the author overcame great obstacles. I just wish she had the ability to tell her tale in a way that would have benefitted more than just her own need to say "poor me".
Undoubtedly my review of this book is colored by my experience. But I'll take the same liberties with my review that I feel the author took with her book. If you are looking for authenticity in a book, my opinion is this is not a wise choice.
Being pregnant and unmarried is a tough situation in any age, especially the early sixties. I know that there were injustices and I believe the author overcame great obstacles. I just wish she had the ability to tell her tale in a way that would have benefitted more than just her own need to say "poor me".
Undoubtedly my review of this book is colored by my experience. But I'll take the same liberties with my review that I feel the author took with her book. If you are looking for authenticity in a book, my opinion is this is not a wise choice.
Read
February 23, 2008"I didn’t make this plan. I just wake up sometimes and want to crawl out of my life� (60).
After getting expelled from high school in Hampton, NH in 1965 when it is discovered that she is 5-months pregnant,
Meredith finds herself very alone in the world. Shunned by the community that she once was a part of-even by her friends & and family including her own mother.
She was sent to live with her father and her step-mother during her pregnancy in Epping, NH; both traveled for work and she was kept in isolation. If they had dinner parties-she was to dine alone in her room. After the baby’s delivery she is sent off to boarding school and the baby is given up for adoption. She has no choice in the matter.
After graduation she and her step-mother have an argument and she is banned from her
father’s house forever.
Meredith’s soul searching took her from New Hampshire to Boston to India to Maine.
“The nights are very cold. I have no jacket, no sweater, no shoes� (113).
"I believe that this is a choice for me, that working here is temporary, that I will be moving back into adventure any day. For most of the women, it is what they will do all their lives, and their jobs are never certain as prices or fish stocks rise and fall� (84).
She wrote such a moving personal essay that Bowdoin
College admitted her as their only non-traditional student at the age of forty. She worked part-time, went to college full-time, and raised two sons alone.
She teaches writing and gives inspiration to students at the University of New Hampshire.
Her memoir is written in a beautiful narrative that is brave, honest, raw, but not "dramatic" it's rational and logical yet free-spirited - a real page turner. Once I started it I didn't put it down until I was finished.
This is a book that you don't read - you consume it, digest it, and think it over.
After getting expelled from high school in Hampton, NH in 1965 when it is discovered that she is 5-months pregnant,
Meredith finds herself very alone in the world. Shunned by the community that she once was a part of-even by her friends & and family including her own mother.
She was sent to live with her father and her step-mother during her pregnancy in Epping, NH; both traveled for work and she was kept in isolation. If they had dinner parties-she was to dine alone in her room. After the baby’s delivery she is sent off to boarding school and the baby is given up for adoption. She has no choice in the matter.
After graduation she and her step-mother have an argument and she is banned from her
father’s house forever.
Meredith’s soul searching took her from New Hampshire to Boston to India to Maine.
“The nights are very cold. I have no jacket, no sweater, no shoes� (113).
"I believe that this is a choice for me, that working here is temporary, that I will be moving back into adventure any day. For most of the women, it is what they will do all their lives, and their jobs are never certain as prices or fish stocks rise and fall� (84).
She wrote such a moving personal essay that Bowdoin
College admitted her as their only non-traditional student at the age of forty. She worked part-time, went to college full-time, and raised two sons alone.
She teaches writing and gives inspiration to students at the University of New Hampshire.
Her memoir is written in a beautiful narrative that is brave, honest, raw, but not "dramatic" it's rational and logical yet free-spirited - a real page turner. Once I started it I didn't put it down until I was finished.
This is a book that you don't read - you consume it, digest it, and think it over.
July 9, 2019
In 1965, in a New Hampshire town, the youngest daughter of a family being raised by a mother trying to keep up appearances, after her self-obsessed husband abandons them (and later berates them for not being happy at his subsequent new marriage), at 16 discovers she is pregnant. It is a threshold time, both in the local area (Hampton Beach riots) in the country (Vietnam war) and in her life, a time when everyone in her family is moving on, leaving her open and vulnerable to the events that lead to her predicament.
Immediately removed from everything familiar, home, school, church and community, she is sent in disgrace to her father's new household and ordered to never go outside or if there is company, to remain in silence upstairs.
She spends her pregnancy confined in this way until the birth when the baby boy is taken from her, adopted out and she is sent to a boarding school for those perceived as misfits (forbidden to speak of the reason she is sent there) to finish her education.
Meredith goes through the many stages of grief, for the loss of her baby and the loss of her own adolescence and latter childhood, doing what is expected but traumatized by the experience to the point of becoming reckless with her own life.
Incredibly she survives to pen this moving, honest, brave memoir - an important story and chance to be heard, of a young mother forced to abandon her baby, like so, so many, never given any kind of emotional support, shunned and shamed, who will eventually rise up, out of her own misery, gift herself the development of her creative writing skills, ultimately to be able to help others write their stories and to publish this important one, her own.
This is the first time I've read an account of a birth mother's story, so many of these stories never get told due to the shame they will have endured and the distance they have put between their past and their attempt to live a new life which buries these experiences deep.
It is courageous that Meredith Hall has pushed through that to share the reality of this traumatic experience from her perspective. There are gaps in the story, there are those who have been spared the lens of scrutiny, but there is enough here to to allow readers to feel empathy for the situation and understand the fear some have in overcoming the same, the conditions under which they must live out their entire lives, often never revealing the secret, never able to connect with the innocent child who grows up understanding nothing of the loss they too feel, until an age when they're often told to be grateful for what they've been supposedly gifted.
I feel the swelling energy, the inexplicable, restless hunger, rising in my own innocent life. I don't care at all about the music or the drinking or the gathering together of teenagers for fun and the thrill of belonging. But my father is gone. He has a new life, a new wife and daughter, and never calls or visits. I miss him badly. My mother is inaccessible. My older brother and sister have moved on to their own lives, leaving me alone at home and on the beach while my mother works and plays with Peter.
Immediately removed from everything familiar, home, school, church and community, she is sent in disgrace to her father's new household and ordered to never go outside or if there is company, to remain in silence upstairs.
It is true that my shunning was a message from our community to my mother. Her rejection of me was a measure of the humiliation she felt. She believed until her death that I caused her to lose her friends and her stature in the town.
She spends her pregnancy confined in this way until the birth when the baby boy is taken from her, adopted out and she is sent to a boarding school for those perceived as misfits (forbidden to speak of the reason she is sent there) to finish her education.
"We must protect the girls," Mrs. Kroehne said. "You understand." I do understand. I am a contaminant and must be kept silent. It has been three months since my baby was born, three months since I walked away from my baby with milk dripping from my breasts. I will not say this to any of these young people during my time among them. I will construct careful lies and memorize them to explain myself, my dark inward life, my hunger for love, my tough resistance to trust.
Meredith goes through the many stages of grief, for the loss of her baby and the loss of her own adolescence and latter childhood, doing what is expected but traumatized by the experience to the point of becoming reckless with her own life.
Mourning with no end, and a sense that I had lost everything - my child, my mother's love and protection, my father's love and protection, , the life I had once imagined for myself - hollowed me out. I floated every day alone and disconnected, and could not find comfort or release. I understood clearly that my history had harmed me, had cut me off from the normal connections between people. Every day for five years I had been afraid of this disconnection, feeling the possibility of perfect detachment within my reach, like a river running alongside, inviting me to step into its current.
Incredibly she survives to pen this moving, honest, brave memoir - an important story and chance to be heard, of a young mother forced to abandon her baby, like so, so many, never given any kind of emotional support, shunned and shamed, who will eventually rise up, out of her own misery, gift herself the development of her creative writing skills, ultimately to be able to help others write their stories and to publish this important one, her own.
This is the first time I've read an account of a birth mother's story, so many of these stories never get told due to the shame they will have endured and the distance they have put between their past and their attempt to live a new life which buries these experiences deep.
It is courageous that Meredith Hall has pushed through that to share the reality of this traumatic experience from her perspective. There are gaps in the story, there are those who have been spared the lens of scrutiny, but there is enough here to to allow readers to feel empathy for the situation and understand the fear some have in overcoming the same, the conditions under which they must live out their entire lives, often never revealing the secret, never able to connect with the innocent child who grows up understanding nothing of the loss they too feel, until an age when they're often told to be grateful for what they've been supposedly gifted.
It has just been discovered that women carry fetal cells from all the babies they have carried. Crossing the defensive boundaries of our immune system and mixing with our own cells, the fetal cells circulate in the mother's bloodstream for decades after each birth. The body does not tolerate foreign cells, which trigger illness and rejection. But a mother's body incorporates into her own the cells of her children as if they recognize each other, belong to each other. This fantastic melding of two selves, mother and child, is called human microchimerism. My three children are carried in my bloodstream still....How did we not know this? How can this be a surprise?
January 18, 2025
Without a Map: a memoir by Meredith Hall is a moving story about love and memory. She got pregnant in the '60s and became exiled for years from her family. Her mom sent her to live with her father and a stepmother who didn't like her. She lived in a cold house mostly alone, with restrictions not to go outside where people could see her. Her child is given up for adoption and she never sees him. After the birth she's sent to a "strange little school" to finish high school. She is a woman among girls and she feels out of place everywhere. When she returns to her mother the plan is for her to go to college in Cambridge, she stands up to her mother saying that she's not staying with her till school starts. She takes off with little money to the city but a phone number of one of the girls from the school. Within a week she is asked to leave. She meets a young Swedish college student and stays with him. They have big adventures on a boat he buys. School doesn't work out for her. When the relationship sours she travels to Europe and walks continents crossing into Turkey and Asia. This is the most extreme part of the book, and the book is extreme, both her experiences and her emotional landscape. We're with her and feeling the deep loss and disconnection from the world.
We move through her exiled world with her, timed by her counting how old her son is at different points. He is always in her mind. She tells her story from her perspective, and the cuts weave together well.
She returns and attempts to heal the wounds with her family. But they have closed off that time and don't want to talk about the past. She is caretaker to her mother, then to her father to their death. She sees her father, "These are his blue eyes, intelligent, hungry, clouded with an old man's fading vigor." She has her two sons and her first son finds her.
This brief outline doesn't hold the emotional weight one feels reading the book. The writing is sublime, the story riveting up to the last chapters, a divorce is mentioned but nothing about the husband. Her sons and her build a house for her in the woods in Maine. She's a teacher and with good writing skills shown in this book.
Some quotes:
"No one in our class was bad. We believed we were good children, and were. The 1950s still breathed its insistent, costly calm through our childhoods. When we said, "I'm in the sixth grade," we meant, I belong with these boys and girls; we are bound in inevitable affection.
"There was no atonement. My mother died with our past laced between us, love and its failures, love and its gravity."
“Do I know how to love, how not to harm, how to protect and defend, how to be sanctuary?�
"I know that death preempts any undoing of our lapses, any remaking of the love we offer when there is still life. I know that we suddenly find we wish we had said and done almost everything differently, that wisdom and calm come too late for us to correct the withholdings."
"There is a mystery here about love and all its failings, love and its final redemptions."
"Penthos. God of loss and lamentation. The ancient Greeks understood the flowing tears of grief as conduits to a softening heart and compassion. They captured their tears of grief in tiny bottles and carried them around their necks on blue ribbons, binding them to the one they lost and to the promise of greater compassion. in their anguish, they were opened to the corollary, kindness and tenderness. Grief and beneficence were for them inextricable. The gift of tears.
In The Topography of Tears, Rose-Lynn Fisher shares photographs of her tears of loss and tears of gratitude, taken under a microscope. Tears of sadness and happiness differ from the tears our bodies make to protect our eyes. Instead of water and salt, they contain complex hormones and enzymes, elements of emotion. Fishers images are stirring, like aerial views of river deltas and frost on windows and lace laid across the landscape. The perfect beauty of our tears.�
“An old proverb says, “Some things can only be seen through eyes that have shed tears.� When we lose people we love—maybe they die, maybe they disappear from us, a lost child, maybe they exile us to a separate world—we do not have to carry the terrible weight of sorry inside our minds and hearts. We cry. Tears of sorry flow through us, opening us to vulnerability, softening our hearts, allowing us to voyage across the vast sea toward compassion and joy.�
We move through her exiled world with her, timed by her counting how old her son is at different points. He is always in her mind. She tells her story from her perspective, and the cuts weave together well.
She returns and attempts to heal the wounds with her family. But they have closed off that time and don't want to talk about the past. She is caretaker to her mother, then to her father to their death. She sees her father, "These are his blue eyes, intelligent, hungry, clouded with an old man's fading vigor." She has her two sons and her first son finds her.
This brief outline doesn't hold the emotional weight one feels reading the book. The writing is sublime, the story riveting up to the last chapters, a divorce is mentioned but nothing about the husband. Her sons and her build a house for her in the woods in Maine. She's a teacher and with good writing skills shown in this book.
Some quotes:
"No one in our class was bad. We believed we were good children, and were. The 1950s still breathed its insistent, costly calm through our childhoods. When we said, "I'm in the sixth grade," we meant, I belong with these boys and girls; we are bound in inevitable affection.
"There was no atonement. My mother died with our past laced between us, love and its failures, love and its gravity."
“Do I know how to love, how not to harm, how to protect and defend, how to be sanctuary?�
"I know that death preempts any undoing of our lapses, any remaking of the love we offer when there is still life. I know that we suddenly find we wish we had said and done almost everything differently, that wisdom and calm come too late for us to correct the withholdings."
"There is a mystery here about love and all its failings, love and its final redemptions."
"Penthos. God of loss and lamentation. The ancient Greeks understood the flowing tears of grief as conduits to a softening heart and compassion. They captured their tears of grief in tiny bottles and carried them around their necks on blue ribbons, binding them to the one they lost and to the promise of greater compassion. in their anguish, they were opened to the corollary, kindness and tenderness. Grief and beneficence were for them inextricable. The gift of tears.
In The Topography of Tears, Rose-Lynn Fisher shares photographs of her tears of loss and tears of gratitude, taken under a microscope. Tears of sadness and happiness differ from the tears our bodies make to protect our eyes. Instead of water and salt, they contain complex hormones and enzymes, elements of emotion. Fishers images are stirring, like aerial views of river deltas and frost on windows and lace laid across the landscape. The perfect beauty of our tears.�
“An old proverb says, “Some things can only be seen through eyes that have shed tears.� When we lose people we love—maybe they die, maybe they disappear from us, a lost child, maybe they exile us to a separate world—we do not have to carry the terrible weight of sorry inside our minds and hearts. We cry. Tears of sorry flow through us, opening us to vulnerability, softening our hearts, allowing us to voyage across the vast sea toward compassion and joy.�
November 9, 2022
This book was completely unexpected in a good way. When I was told about the book, I was fearful it would be really hard for me to read, as I have an adopted daughter. The author had a wonderful way of sharing her very hard challenges in a reflective way, that leaves hope as well as sadness.
The only thing I struggled with was the jumping around a bit with the narrative. I sometimes caught myself thinking she was talking about one thing, but it was really another. Not a huge disconnect, as her writing style is lovely and I didn’t get too far before I had the “Oh, here we are� moments to get re-oriented.
I did find myself asking a lot of survival based questions around her overseas trip, I guess I will just have to continue to wonder�
I’m truly looking forward to reading Beneficence.
The only thing I struggled with was the jumping around a bit with the narrative. I sometimes caught myself thinking she was talking about one thing, but it was really another. Not a huge disconnect, as her writing style is lovely and I didn’t get too far before I had the “Oh, here we are� moments to get re-oriented.
I did find myself asking a lot of survival based questions around her overseas trip, I guess I will just have to continue to wonder�
I’m truly looking forward to reading Beneficence.
April 29, 2008
Well-written, but there was a lot of redundancy in the book. I think the chapters on her traveling and walking, bra-less, sock-less, basically in a sac from country to country were actually quite long and drawn out. It seemed like she had several moments of revelation--a sudden will to live and then she goes back to traveling and is struck by another sudden will to live. The stream of consciousness is a bit off-putting, but her ending gives you a sense of greater purpose and compassion. I am most impressed by her son's and her own capacity to move forward and still love. They were both abandoned and they both accept the lives they are living--without anger but with love. I admit the writing is amazing, but some of it was said three or four times in the same way, making it loose it's impact. A better editor would have found some powerful sentences and left it at that, cutting several pages from the book. The memoir was poignant--and I love that the author found it in her heart to be. The scene with the chickens was awful--but it's what you have to do--and symbolizes the tough armor so many of us need to basically survive. Overall, I liked the book a lot, and the way no one gave an inch in the end (as people don't often do), but the author decided to forgive anyway. It's a powerful glue despite such a broken past.
November 10, 2008
Hall, as a young girl, begins her story with the unmet expectations, confusion, and disappointment when her beloved father and mother divorce. Later she finds herself victimized by a community who shuns her when she becomes pregnant at the age of sixteen. Her mother shuffles her off to her father, who lives in another town. The pregnancy is hidden, and Hall is made to give the baby up for adoption.
Hall's victim hood and unmet expectations grow to dominate her early adult life. She lives a life of unplanned wandering which takes her all over the world. In her wanderings she identifies with the humbled yet the beauty she sees around her lifts her spirit and rests inside until, in her forties, after marriage, divorce, and two more children, she returns to higher education where she releases her spirit and suffering into a lyricism of breathtaking beauty, elegance, and understatement.
Hall has a rare gift enhanced by a life lived unplanned, off-the-cuff, without a map, and seeped in victim hood. In the end, she comes to terms with the human condition and gives us a beautiful accounting of her journey into peace and into the uniting with the son lost so many years ago: a masterpiece indeed!
September 15, 2015
I didn't enjoy this book much. It struck me as remarkably self-indulgent. Hall waxes poetic about the wrongs done to her for 75% of the book and that is just tough to get through. Where was the growth? I felt that a real opportunity was missed regarding the author's time spent backpacking. More detail would have been fascinating. I'd at least have liked to know how it was that she got home following her trip. How did she meet her husband? Did she move past her daddy issues to enjoy a satisfying adult relationship, or was the marriage a disaster?
I will say, Hall's writing can be lovely at times. Very lyrical. Further, the time Hall spent with her mother as an adult was interesting, as well as when she met Paul, but those were the only two gripping parts of the novel. The book was only 220 pages, but man did it feel loooooong!
I will say, Hall's writing can be lovely at times. Very lyrical. Further, the time Hall spent with her mother as an adult was interesting, as well as when she met Paul, but those were the only two gripping parts of the novel. The book was only 220 pages, but man did it feel loooooong!
March 18, 2009
I won't say the book isn't compelling. But my god, what a hero this woman is to herself. Oh she has flaws, sure. Beautiful, brooding, thoughtful flaws.
But everyone else, especially her mom and dad, are simply, one-dimensionally, weak and awful. She shows no empathy or interest in her parent's reasons for their behavior, and waits silently for decades for them to apologize to her for being ashamed of her pregnancy.
But everyone else, especially her mom and dad, are simply, one-dimensionally, weak and awful. She shows no empathy or interest in her parent's reasons for their behavior, and waits silently for decades for them to apologize to her for being ashamed of her pregnancy.
February 16, 2009
I disliked the writing style - all over the place, hard to follow. Redundant.
January 12, 2009
I feel very conflicted about this book! On the one hand, it was fascinating to me, since my mom shares a similar story---pregnant at 16 in the early 1960s. On the other hand, my mom was not expelled from school or disowned by her parents, she married the guy, raised my sister, ended up getting a doctorate, and is generally very happy and successful. The fact that Hall assumes that all girls who got pregnant at 16 in the 60s had the same experience as she did---a heartbreaking one---is somewhat disturbing. Not to say that things were particularly easy for my mom, or that she had much choice in the matter. After divorcing my sister's dad, my mom did travel the world (but she was with my dad and did not, to my knowledge, sleep on the beaches of war-ravaged countries), and I do think both she and my sister have mixed feelings about her being such a young mom. And even though my grandparents probably prodded her more than most families do today to get married and raise my sister completely independently, having the support of her family was likely more valuable than I can ever know.
Havng said that, the twists that Hall's life took, especially towards the end of the book, are incredible. And all the more incredible because they're true! That she waited until she was in her 50s to write this book is a gift to us; had she written this in her 20s, it would not have been as interesting or insightful. The book is beautifully written, if only to paint a dreary picture of her life. Interesting that in the Q&A with the author at the end (which I don't usually read, but did on this one simply because of the similarities with my mom), she says that much of her life has been filled with joy, and she would like to write a book about that someday. Her relationships with her parents are so incredibly difficult to read about that it's shocking when she comes to terms with them and forgives them for what I see as unforgivable deeds. Of course, forgiveness---of others, of ourselves---is one of the central themes of the book.
This is one of those memoirs where, had I not known it was true, I might not have found the story believable. Probably worth reading, most likely at a time when the weather is grey and overcast and you feel like reading a depressing book with a cup of tea. When I told my mom about this book, her reaction was, "Why would you read a book like that?!" Ah, to each her own.
Havng said that, the twists that Hall's life took, especially towards the end of the book, are incredible. And all the more incredible because they're true! That she waited until she was in her 50s to write this book is a gift to us; had she written this in her 20s, it would not have been as interesting or insightful. The book is beautifully written, if only to paint a dreary picture of her life. Interesting that in the Q&A with the author at the end (which I don't usually read, but did on this one simply because of the similarities with my mom), she says that much of her life has been filled with joy, and she would like to write a book about that someday. Her relationships with her parents are so incredibly difficult to read about that it's shocking when she comes to terms with them and forgives them for what I see as unforgivable deeds. Of course, forgiveness---of others, of ourselves---is one of the central themes of the book.
This is one of those memoirs where, had I not known it was true, I might not have found the story believable. Probably worth reading, most likely at a time when the weather is grey and overcast and you feel like reading a depressing book with a cup of tea. When I told my mom about this book, her reaction was, "Why would you read a book like that?!" Ah, to each her own.
January 22, 2011
Arrgh..another book that I'm conflicted about...can't say this year has gotten off to a stellar reading start. Per the back of the book (which makes this not be a spoiler, yes?) "in 1965, in a small New Hampshire town, sixteen year old Meredith Hall got pregnant and was consequently kicked out of her school, home, church and community. Hall's mother sent her to live with her father and stepmother who confined her to the house. Days after giving birth (her baby was put up for adoption) she was sent to a boarding school where she was forbidden to mention anything about her past."
Meredith Hall is alternately a fierce Amazon of a woman who travels around the world by herself after high school, living by her wits as she runs out of money, finally down to selling her every possession but the clothes on her back - and an emotional invertebrate whose lifelong search for any crumb of affection from her parents (who rival Augusten Burrough's in their evil-ness) is just short of pathetic. I don't know if I want to admire or pity this woman, or like Cher in Moonstruck, slap her across the face, yelling "snap out of it!" Her mother was Arctic cold and her father a spineless wretch. Time to move on and find family somewhere else.
Whole chapters are spent on her travels, and the closer she gets to poverty and starvation, the more her mind seemed to wander, with paragraph after paragraph of 60's psychobabble; in fact, the non-linear, non chronological narrative is just as hard to follow - she skips from a field in Palestine to writing a Valentine to her mother as a little girl, to living by herself in Colorado (barely more than a mention, when did that happen?).
There are a few paragraphs toward the end of the book (not giving anything away here) where Hall talks about the science of motherhood and something I'd never heard of called human microchimerism. I don't even want to know if this is junk science or the real deal, because those three paragraphs moved me more than anything in this book, or almost anything I've read lately. They salvaged the book for me. And as the bleeding heart liberal version of a Mama Grizzly, I closed the book and went to give my son a big long hug.
Meredith Hall is alternately a fierce Amazon of a woman who travels around the world by herself after high school, living by her wits as she runs out of money, finally down to selling her every possession but the clothes on her back - and an emotional invertebrate whose lifelong search for any crumb of affection from her parents (who rival Augusten Burrough's in their evil-ness) is just short of pathetic. I don't know if I want to admire or pity this woman, or like Cher in Moonstruck, slap her across the face, yelling "snap out of it!" Her mother was Arctic cold and her father a spineless wretch. Time to move on and find family somewhere else.
Whole chapters are spent on her travels, and the closer she gets to poverty and starvation, the more her mind seemed to wander, with paragraph after paragraph of 60's psychobabble; in fact, the non-linear, non chronological narrative is just as hard to follow - she skips from a field in Palestine to writing a Valentine to her mother as a little girl, to living by herself in Colorado (barely more than a mention, when did that happen?).
There are a few paragraphs toward the end of the book (not giving anything away here) where Hall talks about the science of motherhood and something I'd never heard of called human microchimerism. I don't even want to know if this is junk science or the real deal, because those three paragraphs moved me more than anything in this book, or almost anything I've read lately. They salvaged the book for me. And as the bleeding heart liberal version of a Mama Grizzly, I closed the book and went to give my son a big long hug.
September 23, 2008
I’m a fiction reader. I only read nonfiction if I somehow feel that it is an assignment. Maybe it’s the book we’re discussing in one of my book clubs, or maybe a friend passes it on to me and says that I must read it. But I just really can’t recall a nonfiction book that I read simply for pleasure. Not that they didn’t turn out to BE pleasurable. I just don’t reach for one when the choosing is totally left up to me. This is the 4th memoir I’ve read in the past year and it’s one that had I known how poetic the language, how riveting Meredith’s life path, how close I would feel to the author as well as her imperfect parents, I would have chosen this book without prodding.
It is the most personal account of one’s life I have read. Centering around her 16 year old pregnant self in 1966 Meredith pours out her soul as she searches for why she made the choice to change from being the super smart good girl and have sex on the beach with an almost stranger; why she went from being a member of a close tight-knit small-town group of girl friends to being kicked out of school, kicked out of her mother’s house, and abandoned by her church, friends and family. But she mainly searches for why her parents failed to love and protect her. She seeks to forgive those who shunned her, begs forgiveness from the son she left at the hospital on Memorial Day 1966, and lordy how she searches for someone to love her.
It is the most personal account of one’s life I have read. Centering around her 16 year old pregnant self in 1966 Meredith pours out her soul as she searches for why she made the choice to change from being the super smart good girl and have sex on the beach with an almost stranger; why she went from being a member of a close tight-knit small-town group of girl friends to being kicked out of school, kicked out of her mother’s house, and abandoned by her church, friends and family. But she mainly searches for why her parents failed to love and protect her. She seeks to forgive those who shunned her, begs forgiveness from the son she left at the hospital on Memorial Day 1966, and lordy how she searches for someone to love her.
August 18, 2022
It is hard to know what to say about this book. I thank the author for her courage in writing it, and for creating beautiful sentences like "The sun creeps across the afternoon, and my shadow follows it," and "A kingfisher sits in her favorite cedar snag at the edge of the pond and cackles." I feel so fortunate in having had unconditional love and acceptance in my family of birth and having thus been able to give that to my own children; I cannot even imagine the anguish of being ostracized and emotionally abandoned in the way this author was. There were parts of this book that jumped around so much it was a bit hard to follow. But this next quote does a great job of summing up what life is about, and rings very true to me: "I have lived this life, and no matter what others may decide about it, I must claim each decision as mine. I have caused harm, failed in the expectations and obligations of love. I have loved well. What I do each day is carried within me until I die." Thank you, Meredith Hall, for writing this memoir.
July 28, 2010
This memoir begins with a 17 year old girl giving up her baby for adoption (year 1966) and traces her life following this event. It's an interesting book as much for what it leaves out (a marriage, births of two other sons, traveling) I liked the beginning--the tale of her shunning from her family, church, school because of her pregnancy, and I liked her reuniting with her son toward the end of the book. It's definitely an interesting read--including time on a fishing boat in rough seas, and some good backpacking in Europe stories--but I wanted more of the stuff that she left out. And it's lyrical in places. Thumbs up!
August 5, 2017
Meredith Halls' memoir describes her family's reaction to her unplanned teenage pregnancy in 1965 and the impact it had on her life. It caused her to be outcast from her family and their love and acceptance. Poignant and powerful. It isn't told chronologically which may cause a little confusion and some questions are left unanswered, but they aren't central to the storyline. It demonstrates what happens when families refuse to address difficult issues and instead sweep them under the rug.
February 18, 2019
I am so glad I stumbled upon this book! It now sits next to my other “favourite� books.
This book was published in 2007.
Meredith Hall’s writing/prose almost hypnotic.
The memoir is told in a series of essays, not linear, but back and forth in time, sometimes information repeating itself.
But I was gripped from the beginning when she became pregnant as a teen and shunned.
Being kicked out of school, kicked out of her home.
Her mother sending her to live with her father and stepmother both of whom travelled a lot for work leaving Meredith often alone, where she was to hide in the house so that no one would see her, so that no one would know.
I found these beginning stories the most interesting. The anguish of having no choice in giving up of her child.
I did not enjoy the middle stories as much. The years with the boyfriend and working on a fishing boat and her time backpacking with very little money often hungry and selling her clothing and even her boots along the way through Europe, Istanbul and Turkey were not as gripping for me. I also did wonder how she got home.
Meredith wrote her first essay in 2002. Chapter 10, Killing Chickens. It is a gut wrenching essay. One hard to read. Breaking the necks of chickens, killing them one by one, doing what needed being done. Doing it on her birthday, after having told her children that their father and she were divorcing. She felt that by doing this difficult task that she could handle whatever would come.
Later she will meet her first child, the son she’d had to give up when a teen.
She will care for her aging and dying mother.
There is shock in learning about the parents that adopted her first child. Adopted parents not always turning out as we might expect.
After I finished the book I was very disappointed when I did an internet search looking for other books by Meredith and finding none.
But maybe she’s too busy teaching writing at the University of New Hampshire or has nothing more she feels she needs to say, after having said so much in this book.
This book was published in 2007.
Meredith Hall’s writing/prose almost hypnotic.
The memoir is told in a series of essays, not linear, but back and forth in time, sometimes information repeating itself.
But I was gripped from the beginning when she became pregnant as a teen and shunned.
Being kicked out of school, kicked out of her home.
Her mother sending her to live with her father and stepmother both of whom travelled a lot for work leaving Meredith often alone, where she was to hide in the house so that no one would see her, so that no one would know.
I found these beginning stories the most interesting. The anguish of having no choice in giving up of her child.
I did not enjoy the middle stories as much. The years with the boyfriend and working on a fishing boat and her time backpacking with very little money often hungry and selling her clothing and even her boots along the way through Europe, Istanbul and Turkey were not as gripping for me. I also did wonder how she got home.
Meredith wrote her first essay in 2002. Chapter 10, Killing Chickens. It is a gut wrenching essay. One hard to read. Breaking the necks of chickens, killing them one by one, doing what needed being done. Doing it on her birthday, after having told her children that their father and she were divorcing. She felt that by doing this difficult task that she could handle whatever would come.
Later she will meet her first child, the son she’d had to give up when a teen.
She will care for her aging and dying mother.
There is shock in learning about the parents that adopted her first child. Adopted parents not always turning out as we might expect.
After I finished the book I was very disappointed when I did an internet search looking for other books by Meredith and finding none.
But maybe she’s too busy teaching writing at the University of New Hampshire or has nothing more she feels she needs to say, after having said so much in this book.
January 11, 2021
Captivating memoir. The timeline was a little messy, with the repetition of certain pieces of her story. I was riveted by her honesty and could feel the pain she went through being shunned by her family and the sadness she carried given that they never sought atonement.
January 20, 2023
I felt a lot of emotions during this book; heartache, sorrow, anger, bewilderment. I even threw the book across the room once. I didn’t understand the author until I read an interview with her at the end of the book. Don’t forget to read that part if you are struggling with the story, it helps.
December 4, 2020
I’d give this book an even higher rating if I could!!! Beautifully written. A true gem. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
June 24, 2022
Finally! This book took me FOREVER! It’s the authors writing style that got to me. She writes very poetically, which is not my favorite style. It’s a very beautifully written memoir told in essay format. I just am not a fan of Beautiful writing. One part that touched me: the way she cared for her ailing mother later in life.
February 20, 2023
This book made me sad.
June 21, 2021
This is such a tough story and one that is true for thousands, millions of women.
What truly got me in this story is how M Hall brings forth the universal shame women carry.
What truly got me in this story is how M Hall brings forth the universal shame women carry.
May 30, 2022
Brutal but beautiful memoir.
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