Adoption: These stories of adopted children, adoptive parents and birth mothers show the resilience as well as the vulnerability of the human spirit, writes Patricia Bourden
Sara Holloway's anthology of adoption stories represents a very significant addition to the canon of literature on the subject. Structured as a triptych, it bears witness to the subject from the vantage point of adopted children, birth mothers and adoptive parents.
While connected thematically, these stories are a celebration of the range and diversity of the human condition. Each tells its own story but also exists in a contrapuntal relationship with the others. The fact that all of the authors are writers is reflected in the stylistic range, which makes for wonderful reading.
As the product of a happy adoption story, I can assent to the pervading motifs: the fantasies that adopted people nourish about their birth parents, the sense of abandonment, the significance of the moment of revelation, the desire for connectedness, the sheer need for a child. It is, however, indicative of the sociological shift since the late 20th century that while the narratives of the adopted people all belong to the old dispensation in which "home grown" babies were available for adoption, all but one of the adoptive parents' accounts deal with foreign adoptions.
The stories of the adopted writers divide naturally into those that worked and those that didn't. AM Homes, Don Chaon and Martin Rowson belong to the former while Bernard Cornwall, Robert Dessaix, Dominic Collier and Sandra Newman belong to the latter category.
Cornwall was raised in a dysfunctional family who belonged to a puritanical religious sect. He and four other adopted children were the victims of abusive, repressive parenting. He ultimately rejected his adoptive parenting by reverting to his original name and is unambiguous in his verdict: "The adoption failed. A family failed to ignite. All of us were unhappy."
As he approached his 60th birthday, he tracked down his biological parents and experienced what he describes as the "extraordinary shock of recognition" when he met his extended family, who were "My tribe. Like me". He has no doubt about the nature/nurture debate: "I am certain we cannot escape nature and that nurture is, at best, a minor influence."
Sandra Newman was also raised in a troubled family in which her adopted mother finally committed suicide when Sandra was 13. She describes an adopted child as "a wolf raised by humans" who is "unrespectable by blood". In the case of Dessaix, despite the efforts of his well-intentioned adoptive father, the family did not work for him: "We were shaped as if somebody had dropped something on the floor." In common with many adopted people there was for him the sense that "I knew who I was not but not who I was".
Dominic Collier also had the sense of not fitting in: "I felt like a visitor from another galaxy who had crashed-landed on the wrong planet." Like many adopted people, he found solace in the arrival of his own four children: "These are my people and I am made more whole by being among them."
Though Martin Rowson acknowledges "this persistent sense of a lack of completion", his adoption was a success. When he eventually searched out his roots he came to the conclusion that he was glad to have been raised as he had been "rather than slugging it out with 10 siblings in a small house in California". He is diametrically opposed to Cornwall as he asserts the primacy of nurture over nature: "These were the people I'd lived my life with, who, despite the genetic legacies, made me what I am."
Don Chaon's story dramatises his first meeting with his biological father, who is only 17 years his senior. Despite all the differences of background and education they manage to celebrate New Year's Eve together in an atmosphere of mutual acceptance and ease. AM Homes's account of the impact of the unsolicited appearance of her birth mother would strike a chord with any adopted person. Initially shocked, she then became fascinated to discover the facts and then repulsed by the reality of the 50-year-old woman, who she felt she would not have survived growing up with. This woman, who she ultimately has to reject, is a far cry from the "Queen of Queens, the Princess of Princesses" she had fantasised about for years.
There is less diversity in the tales of the birth mothers. There is only the pain of loss and their voices echo and resonate into the indefinite future. For Priscilla T Nagle, "The screams never die. They just get locked away, driving deeper inside you". In Lynn Lauber's testimony, "No matter what you do, pain bleeds through, like a stain".
Of the nine accounts of adoptive parents, only one deals with a same-country adoption. The babies are adopted from China, Russia, Mali, Chile, Thailand, and the US. Overwhelming honesty, lack of sentimentality as well as a spirit of dogged determination characterises all of these stories. Though at times the bureaucratic obstacles seem insurmountable, the desire to find completion in the creation of a family transcends all difficulties.
No doubt all of the parents would agree with Matthew Engel's description of the process as "the most extraordinary adventure of our lives: an emotional thriller, an epic". Carol Lefevre bravely confronts rejection - surely the great fear that haunts all adoptive parents - when her daughter confronts her with: "You're not even my real mother."
Mark Wormald bears witness to the intense love of adoptive parents in his narration of the near-death experience of one of his boys. In Mirabel Osler's story it is her birth daughter and not her Thai-born daughter who experiences an identity crisis in later years.
In the final and well-placed essay, Daniel Menaker challenges the view that regards the fate of the adopted child as being contingent or arbitrary, as though the story of the "biologically familied" were more natural and in keeping with some greater plan.
These accounts appeal because they affirm the resilience of the human condition as well as its essential vulnerability. They do not seek out cosy closures. Huck, Dan Chaon's biological father, puts it well when he says of the trauma of adoption: "That's what people think when they're teenagers, right? They're like, 'Oh, I've had a trauma, I'll never get over it.' And then you get to be my age and you realise that your whole frickin' life is a trauma. You survive, man. You know? I swear to God."
Patricia Bourden teaches English and history and has recently been appointed principal of Mount Anville Secondary School, Dublin
Family Wanted: Adoption Stories. Edited by Sara Holloway, Granta, 280pp. £14.99