Finding Karen Black by Diane Bay is an adoption memoir in which the author, Diane, searches for and finds her biological mother and father, as well as several siblings and other family members. The memoir gives a brief summary of Diane's childhood, including some traumatic experiences with her adoptive mother who suffered from mental illness. Simultaneously, each chapter ends with a summary of Karen Black's life in that time period. Karen Black is a movie actress who found great success in her career after giving up her first child (Diane) for adoption at the age of 19. Diane then gives a short description of how she made contact with her birth mother as well as the many other family members she connected with over facebook, email and phone calls. Diane describes her trip meet her new relatives as well as the many similarities and interesting family memories that are uncovered in these encounters. The families quickly blend together and the memoir continues to cover life events such as birthdays and other family reunions etc.
I enjoy this type of memoir as I find adoption fascinating. I enjoyed a lot of the commentary about how the siblings looked or acted similar and how many times chance encounters may or may not have happened by being in the same area at the same time without knowing. The fact that Karen is famous was also a neat part of this particular story because it meant that Diane could learn about her mother's history in ways that most adoptive children are unable, such as internet biographies and feature film videos! I liked that the book was primarily told in chronological order as it was very easy to follow and keep track of information.
That being said, I wish that there had been a bit more depth in most sections or ideas covered in this book. I know that Diane was fortunate enough to have a very simple path to finding her mother and thus there many not have been a lot of logistical information to describe, but I felt that the experiences were described in a very surface-level way, as a result there are both limited informational details and limited descriptive and emotional details. By about 25% of the memoir I felt I knew the majority of the story. The following 75% was interesting and involved the author's connection with her newfound family, but it was also fairly surface level for example a chapter might include: who she met that morning, interesting similarities they noticed, a phone call home to check in, who she met in the afternoon, an interesting memory shared, what they did for dinner, looking back on some family photos. While at times Diane described what feelings these activities invoked (and of course much more detail than my simple example summary) in general it was kind of more like reading a diary entry than a moving memoir.
Overall it was an interesting and important story, sharing many sides to adoption. I'm glad I was able to give it a read, but it wasn't my favourite book. Thanks to Booksirens and the publisher for giving me the chance to read and voluntarily review an advance review copy for free.
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