Some reviews are easier to write than others. Perhaps it depends on how close one is to the subject matter. Writing about marmalade, chocolate or toothpaste has few, if any, emotional overtones for me so it’s easy to be objective. Whereas writing about music or books that have affected me deeply, or about personal matters, presents a great challenge: how do I step back far enough to see the overall picture without losing what it was that made me want to write about something in the first place?
► Declaration of Personal Interest ◄
The current challenge is the hardest yet because the writer of the book under review is none other than the lady otherwise known as Mrs Floon. I thought long and hard about writing a review at all because of my personal connection and sought advice from a responsible senior Ciao member before writing this. Since the book had been proposed to Ciao by NataliePhelan and reviewed by her, it seemed that it would be OK to add my own perspective.
However, this will not be a book review in the usual sense. Natalie has given an independent viewpoint of this book and anyone else who feels the urge can also write about it. Being so close up, I’m not the best person to comment about the quality of the writing or the involving nature of the narrative. But I am in the unique position of being able to give some insight into the book’s background and its evolution and that will be the thrust of this article.
Marie wanted to write long before I met her as a colleague at a school in Gibraltar in 1970. But it was not until 1985 that she got her first “big break”.
Having been brought up as an adopted child, a childhood scarred by physical and emotional abuse, she much later traced and found her natural mother, whom we met in a remote area of New York State in 1982. Her adoptive mother, a Control Freak Par Excellence, was enraged when Marie told her about the meeting and cut off all contact, also removing her from her will. In desperation Marie tried many times to put her side of the story but the phone was slammed down on her every time. Eventually I suggested she wrote an article telling her story and to try getting it published in the Sunday Express, the newspaper her adoptive parents took each week. They not only published it, they asked for photographs as well and gave her an impressive two-page spread.
If her adoptive mother was not speaking to us before, now she was Not Speaking even more! It took the birth of our fifth child, a year later, to thaw relations, though Marie was never reinstated in the will.
The spin-off from this episode was a spate of articles for many newspapers and magazines on a variety of subjects from dog-droppings to haemophilia. This last was prompted by the fact that our third child, Nathan, was born with the condition. Marie eventually became so knowledgeable on the subject in her attempt to come to terms with it, that our GP suggested she wrote a book about it. She took him seriously, did a lot of research by interviewing various eminent authorities and in 1989, “Understanding Haemophilia” was published, a book that combined our experiences of bringing up Nathan with background knowledge of the condition and practical suggestions for parents of newly-diagnosed children. It was, in short, the book we looked for in vain when the dread words, “Your son has severe haemophilia” were first uttered to Marie by a hospital doctor.
► Seeking perfection ◄
Because of her upbringing, Marie has always been driven to seek perfection in herself and all she does and never feels she has achieved anything of value. Yet she was always loved by the children she taught and highly valued by their parents. “Understanding Haemophilia” was very successful in its field. And she trained as a masseuse, gaining a very high pass mark, and took up pastel art, which made a wonderful exhibition earlier this year in Lincoln, copies which one of our sons sold in great quantities on Ebay.
► The Book ◄
But far from accepting compliments and learning to value herself, Marie has only been able to hear the voice of her adoptive mother, who died ten years ago at the age of ninety-two, telling her how worthless she is. It was this that prompted her to start writing down her experiences with a view to putting them together as a book.
She would write in a spiral-bound notebook, crossing out and altering so much that even she could only read her work with difficulty. She would then read the latest instalment out to me and I would be brutally honest about how well I felt it worked. To her immense credit she accepted my criticism wherever she felt it was justified and put up a spirited defence when she felt I was wrong. The whole of the first section was scrapped completely, even though a lot of effort had been put into it.
Eventually she decided to tell her story in the present tense, getting back “inside her own head” at the age she had been at the time of each incident related – in other words, reliving experiences, painful though that often was. It gave a sense of immediacy to the narrative, a feeling of rushing headlong into the unknown.
As I gave the OK to a section, Marie would dictate it onto minidisc and I, being comfortable with computers, transcribed it painstakingly onto my hard-drive. It was sheer luck that I decided to do a backup to floppy disc a week before we were burgled and my computer stolen…
How do you end a book that tells what is essentially an ongoing story? We discussed this at length until Fate took a hand, giving her a surprise ending that I think is remarkably effective.
Eventually the book, running to 65,000 words, was more or less complete. Searching round for a title, Marie eventually settled for a quote from her adoptive mother, who used to introduce her to visitors with those words. It encapsulated her feeling of never fully belonging to the family she was brought up in.
The search for a publisher, as any writer other than a lucky few will know, was long and arduous. But eventually, having scoured the Writers’ And Artists’ Yearbook, Marie found Pipers’ Ash Limited. The proprietor, Alf Tyson, asked her to email her manuscript, though he wasn’t making any promises.
Just before Christmas last year, he emailed back to say that the book was too long. He only publishes books up to 30,000 words in length – what he describes as “chapbooks”. However, he recognised the quality of the writing and suggested she narrow the focus from the wider aspects of her life to one of her adoption and her encounter with her natural mother – and anything directly related.
We embarked on a hatchet job, cutting out everything we could (and a lot I felt was powerful and worthwhile) until we were left with a shadow of the former book. This we emailed back to Alf Tyson. Eventually he emailed again: this time the book lacked continuity in places (hardly surprising, really!). We went through the whole manuscript again, me trying to be the objective reader, Marie filling in the continuity gaps and adding a final section to help other adoptees.
There was a nervous pause while we awaited Alf’s verdict. Finally, at the end of April, he emailed Marie with the news she had been waiting for but worried might not arrive: the book was a going concern!
The proofs arrived and we read through them avidly. I was surprised at the way the book had gained a coherence that may have been lacking before. Leaner it may have been but much more direct and powerful.
The only disappointment when the book was finally published (on Marie’s birthday, in May) was that the paperback cover was not as well presented as we might have hoped and the print was quite small. But it is cheap to buy (£4 if you phone the publisher) and is a good read anyway.
► An Ego Trip? ◄
One of Marie’s constant worries about getting the book published was, “Who wants to read the life story of someone unknown?” My response was to remind her that no way would I have spent most of a year typing a whole book, let alone the revising and editing if I felt the whole exercise was just an ego trip. I believed, as I still do, that hers was a story that had to be told, not just for Marie but for all those children still to be adopted. It can be read simply as one person’s rather incredible story in its own right; it can be read as a message to those seeking to adopt a child; it can warn those making such placements of the importance of getting them right; and it can help other adoptees to look at their own experiences and see them in perspective.
► Other Books ◄
The book has already proved to be successful (Marie doesn’t wholly agree, of course!) and has been reviewed in several newspapers including the Sunday Express. She has had emails from a number of people who said they just couldn’t put the book down – they read it in one sitting. “Riveting” was how one reader described it.
Meanwhile, another publisher, Chipmunka Publishing, asked Marie to update “Understanding Haemophilia” with a view to republishing it: the original publisher has gone out of business. In a spurt of frenzied activity she rewrote the entire book, adding a lot of new material. The Haemophilia Society have looked over the manuscript and given it their blessing and are hoping to get Lord Winston to write a foreword. It is scheduled for publication in December.
Meanwhile, the “bleeding chunks” cut out of the present book were too good to waste. Much of the material concerned Marie’s search for some form of therapy to enable her to deal with her upbringing and she has recently “stitched” the fragments together, adding in new material to give continuity. This caused her a great deal of anguish since, as I have already indicated, she writes in the present tense and tries to get back inside the feelings she felt at the time. Can you imagine trying to relive a nervous breakdown in order to get the feelings across to the reader?
This book is now with Pipers’ Ash and Marie is once more fretting about whether or not it will be good enough.
I’ll keep you informed…
► The Details ◄
“And This Is My Adopted Daughter” (ISBN 1-904494-30-7) can be obtained from a variety of sources:
1) From any bookshop, quoting the ISBN above. 2) From Amazon UK (www.amazon.co.uk). Ignore their comment about it being hard to get. It usually arrives within a few days. 3) From the publisher, at £4.95 via his website (www.supamasu.com): click on “Books” at the bottom right, then select “The Young Ones”. Marie’s book is in this series. 4) From the publisher by phone at £4.00 (phone 01249 720563)
It may also be purchased direct from the publisher in a hardback edition, which also has the advantage of being in a larger font. Phone for details.
The publisher also has a compendium of all “The Young Ones” true-life stories, six in all, at only £10, bound in paperback.
