The Mistress's Daughter

A Memoir

By: A.M. Homes

Narrated by: Scott Brick

The "fierce and eloquent" (New York Times) memoir from A.M Homes, award-winning author of May We Be Forgiven and the forthcoming novel The Unfolding

The acclaimed writer A. M. Homes was given up for adoption before she was born. Her biological mother was a twenty-two-year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with a family of his own. The Mistress's Daughter is the ruthlessly honest account of what happened when, thirty years later, her birth parents came looking for her. Homes relates how they initially made contact and what happened afterwards, and digs through the family history of both sets of her parents in a twenty-first-century electronic search for self. Daring, heartbreaking, and startlingly funny, Homes's memoir is a brave and profoundly moving consideration of identity and family.

"A compelling, devastating, and furiously good book written with an honesty few of us would risk." —Zadie Smith

"I fell in love with it from the first page and read compulsively to the end." —Amy Tan©2007 A.M. Homes; (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., and Books on Tape. All rights reserved.

Ancestry buffs and adoptees will like it, but...

Great story...right up until the author started detailing, in excruciatingly minute details, her family ancestor quest. Yawn. Perhaps this is very interesting to people who are ancestry buffs, but I found my mind wandering to what I have next up on my "Wish List". Too bad, really, because otherwise the story was riveting right up to that point in the book. I was also put off a bit by the lackluster narration at the beginning.

Poor casting for a great story

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I would have chosen another narrator. I've liked Jane Adams's performances in films, but she can't read aloud to save herself. Often I had the feeling that she was seeing the text for the first time, and she didn't always seem to know where to put emphasis. It was like those excruciating moments in grade school when the weakest student was asked to read aloud from the text book. Adams's poor reading was often so distracting that I had trouble following the story. I'm really surprised the author okay'd this choice of narrator.

What did you like best about this story?

The story is superb. It's just too bad it was not read by a better narrator.

How could the performance have been better?

Recasting narrator.

I enjoyed this book

Where does The Mistress's Daughter rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I was looking for a memoir like this, an author who's able to explore questions about one's history that aren't really answerable, in order to talk about the pain of being rejected by a parent. This narrator was easier to listen to than the last two audiobooks I've listened to, I appreciated the fact that she sounds conversational rather than crisp and robotic like some. There was one place where she mentioned two relatives going to concentration camps in an almost upbeat way, though-- now that was weird!

What did you like best about this story?

This story was very honest, though this is a person who uses her intellect to distance herself from her raw feelings at times. The writing is skillful, at times repetitive, frustrating to be left with the author's unanswered questions. But she throws a lifeline to anyone who was adopted or who was rejected by a parent, creating an experience of understanding and empathy for the subject of her novel (her discovery of her birth parents), her honesty about the pain of this experience is expressed with subtlety and finesse.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes

Craziness (more or less) under control

A. M. Homes is clearly a mess, as she is glad to show us over and over again. In that way she is normal. But she is also a master story teller with a fine story—about herself. But she does not have have the sense to stop writing when the story ends. I enjoyed the first half of the book, but didn't bother with the second half.

Fair

Best when she is wry instead of bitter, though she is sour as often as she is thoughtful. A bit one-sided.