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	• Without a Map: A Memoir Meredith Hall Beacon Press, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 50 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Closer to 5 stars

Meredith Hall's intriguing memoir "Without a Map" is a singularly poignant and interesting book from a literary point of view and both heart-wrenching and affirming from an emotional point. At first, the non-linear aspect of her story touched on the annoying but then it all came together; in many ways, the absence of chronology added to its uniqueness among memoirs. It was as if in the telling, she suddenly remembered something that made her go back and then move forward again.

As a story of society's reaction to young girls "who got in trouble", it brought back the horrible lack of compassion and empathy so rampant in the fifties and early sixties, when I was also growing up. Boys were understood to have no sexual control and girls were held solely responsible for keeping themselves "pure". Combining this with the lack of full sexual education, a phenomenon that has come back to reality under Bush's "Abstinence only" sex ed, could lead only to what it did in Meredith's life. Pregnant girls were shunned as tramps and sent away to have their babies in hiding and to give them up without ever seeing them. The professionals believed these young girls would easily forget their pasts and go on with their lives. No one except the young girls themselves ever imagined that they would remember their babies in stark detail every single day of their lives. Adoption itself was usually held in privacy between the obstetrician and whomever he deemed worthy of having a baby, often to disastrous consequences, as in this instance.

We don't often hear from these young women again except in what are portrayed as happily-ever-after reunion shows on TV so Meredith's memoir fills an extreme gap in our knowledge. She courageously shows us that the horror of being turned away by the very people invested with the responsibility for loving us unconditionally never goes away, that it permanently and pervasively marks every aspect of one's life forever. In the face of all that, however, the one thing that so stands out about Meredith is her unending capacity for understanding and forgiveness of the very people who least deserve it, her parents and siblings. From her early attempts to completely dissociate herself from her very essence before pregnancy through roaming the Middle East by herself to her years as a middle-aged mother of three grown sons and college writing teacher, who comes to love and embrace living by herself no longer mourning what was so brutally taken from her, Meredith's memoir is beautifully written, beseeching compassion, and determined to stay with the reader for a long long time.

In response to one reviewer who gave this book only one star and claimed Meredith was selfish and whiny and let her father off with no pain, I'm not sure you read this book in its entirety. There was not one instance "poor me". She bravely lived a life none of us should ever have to. She did not let her father off at all. She gave him two choices - to tell her he loved her all along and ask for forgiveness for his mistakes or to do what he ultimately did, to believe Meredith understands what he did and why and beg her to love him anyway. She realized that his cruelty to her and inability to apologize was all about him and would remain that way. He never looks good and never will. And Meredith finds she and her children don't need him after all.

If I have one complaint, it is a small one. Meredith tells us nothing about the father of her later children, the father she divorced after ten years of marriage. Although missing in his entirety, he is not really missed. I am merely curious about the one man who enabled Meredith to find love and the strength to have more children.

I strongly recommend reading Meredith's story and suggest that you will not easily find another as original and inspiring.

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There was zero conversation

I found Meredith Hall's memoir simply stunning. I don't know how she found the perfect words to convey her agony about giving up her precious baby for adoption, but she did. This book is beyond superb. I am 57, one year younger than Hall, so I also remember the severe repression we all suffered as teenage girls in the 1960s. There were many hushed-up pregnancies in my Catholic high school. Are accidental pregnancies any surprise when we were told absolutely nothing about sex or love or how to handle exploding hormones? I felt deeply for Meredith as she suffered the betrayal of both parents. Her father, especially, comes off as such a hopeless jackass, yet Meredith displays great maturity all of her life in her dealings with him. But the massive kick-in-the-stomach betrayal by her mother is Meredith's most stunning writing. Again and again, she reviews that moment in her "former life" when her mother discovers the shameful pregnancy--the moment her entire life as she knew it blows up. Meredith receives zero compassion, zero empathy, zero conversation. I was riveted as she wandered through foreign lands, a completely lost shadow, a mere fragment of humanity. I found myself reeling, again and again, from the sheer courage displayed constantly by this very young, naive woman. My parents also failed me terribly and I did not act as honorably as Meredith Hall. I cannot say enough about this book. It captures an era of utter awakening for all women. It's so important.

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Exquisitely written

Beautifully written memoir of a woman who made a single mistake at 16 and was shunned by friends, school, church and worst of all, her parents. She searches for years for acceptance and love from her mother and father and finally comes to realize she has to love herself for who she is and accept her parents for who they are. In the end, to her own credit, she seems to forgive them (I wouldn't have been able to). Meredith has the ability to make the reader deeply feel her own agony and suffering - I went through a wide range of emotions while reading this book. One of the best writers I've read in some time. Highly recommended.

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Disappointed in PA

I really looked forward to reading this book and was disappointed--it just wasn't good (for me anyway). The writer spends some time focusing on her loneliness as she is pregnant and hidden away in her father's house, but I would have like to have seen more elaboration on how she felt regarding her pregnancy, why she thinks her mother and father acted the way they did, and especially the effect this pregnancy (and shaming) had on her future. For instance, we learn the author is divorced and there is a chapter in which she focuses on telling her young sons, but there is no discussion of her marriage and why it failed. Also, very little is written of her labor which I'm sure is very painful to recall when giving up a baby, but isn't that one of the points of writing a memoir?? And in all there is a disconnect of the relation between past and future--this book is basically a telling of events and rathing boring.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10

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A GOOD SUMMER READ...accordin' to the locals
MAINE TRADITIONS ~ Guides
ROAD TRIP STARTER KIT
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Memoirs

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