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The Mistress's Daughter
A Memoir
by A. M. Homes
A.M. Homes explores through this memoir what it means to her to be adopted. The Mistress's Daughter, an expansion of her 2004 personal essay in "The New Yorker", is also the story of what happened when, thirty years later, her birth parents came looking for her.
Viking Adult, 240 pages
04/05/2007
$24.95
ISBN: 0670038385
Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Booklist Donna Seaman
A can't-put-it-down memoir as remarkable for its crystalline prose, flinty wit, and agile candor as for its arresting revelations. [15 Feb 2007, p.28]
Library Journal Gina Kaiser
Homes draws you in from the first sentence and holds your interest throughout, sharing her fear, disappointment, pathos, and bathos. [15 Feb 2007, p.123]
Chicago Tribune Jane Ciabattari
A whopper of a personal story.
San Francisco Chronicle Heller McAlpin
Although the core essay is the most powerful part of the book, curious readers will appreciate additional material that delves deeper into Homes' roots and the fallout from adoption in general.
The Economist
A poignant, bittersweet story. For Ms Homes, our twining DNA ties us to past and future. The mesmerising specificity of faded photographs and fly-specked wedding licences makes it all seem less arbitrary.
The New York Times Book Review Katie Roiphe
If The Mistress’s Daughter is not entirely satisfying, if it loses some of its furious precision — its perverse, artful inquisition into the motives of its principals — as a document of a flawed, incoherent self, it remains fierce and eloquent. And even some of its messier sections are gripping.
Los Angeles Times Sven Birkerts
After Ballman's death and Hecht's withdrawal, the author pursues a solitary, extended genealogical quest. She immerses herself, and us, in the world of near-biblical "begats." Not surprisingly, the memoir starts to sag.
New York Observer Hillary Frey
The second, longer part of the book is sluggish and contrived. Ms. Homes all but abandons the ruthless investigation of her feelings about her parents (all four of them) and heads for far less compelling terrain: her extended genealogy.
Entertainment Weekly Tina Jordan
The book's first part, which ran in The New Yorker, is a powerful examination of family and self, of the adopted versus the biological, but its impact is diluted in the meandering second half. [13 Apr 2007, p.77]
Publishers Weekly
The final chapter is a loving but tacked-on tribute to Homes's adoptive grandmother that may leave readers wishing the author had given herself more time to fully integrate her adoptive and biological selves. [15 Jan 2007, p.39]
Kirkus Reviews
Ultimately off-putting and unappealing, due to a whiny, self-pitying attitude conveyed in overwrought prose. [15 Jan 2007, p.62]
Washington Post Michael Mewshaw
Like a diligent grad student or an amateur genealogist, she turns from people to paper, from dramatic scenes to a computer screen, from factual research to endless Googling. And in the process her memoir disperses into a pattern of unconnected dots, like a newspaper photograph held too close to the eye.
 The average user rating for this book is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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