Review by Booklist Review
Cowan grew up at odds and angry with her mother. Not until she was in her forties and had lost both parents was Justine able to read her mother's own written memories of growing up in England. Her mother had always claimed a family connection to royalty but in writing she revealed the truth, that after her birth in 1932 she was raised at London's Foundling Hospital. In researching this institution, from its origin to its closure, Cowan discovered the harsh conditions her mother and countless other children endured. This is not only a daughter's memoir about the realities of her mother's life, but also a work of history about an inhumane system and a reminder to always consider the pain others may be hiding. Readers will find it hard not to flinch over the fraught lives of Dorothy and her family, but this thoughtful account creates a context for compassion. Book groups will find as much to discuss here as they have with The Glass Castle (2005), by Jeannette Walls, and Educated (2018), by Tara Westover.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Attorney Cowan debuts with an impressive memoir about the unearthing of her deceased mother's secret past and a generations-long cycle of family trauma. After her mother's death, Cowan set out to discover what caused her emotional instability, cruelty, and "blind idolatry of status and wealth." She learned that her mother's mother left her at the hospital not long after birth, then reclaimed her at the age of 12. In between, Cowan's mother lived at Foundling Hospital, a London orphanage where she was raised under the name "Dorothy Soames" in grim conditions, working long hours doing menial and often degrading tasks. "For two centuries," Cowan writes, "thousands of children like Dorothy Soames were raised to mend socks and clean chamber pots, to work in factories or be sent to sea." Cowan's mother never discussed her upbringing, and Cowan writes of how learning the details of her time in the orphanage helped her reach a posthumous reconciliation never achieved during her mother's life. This frank account of a real-life Dickensian dystopia captivates at every turn. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In Blindfold, award-winning journalist Padnos relates what it's like to be kidnapped and tortured in Syria by Al-Qaeda for two years; originally scheduled for July 2020.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An attorney and environmentalist probes her troubled mother's past as the child inmate of the centuries-old Foundling Hospital of London. Cowan's English-born mother lived in "blind idolatry of wealth and status" and claimed to be descended from a line of Welsh nobles. But behind the facade and her hypercritical ways lurked a secret that the author began to uncover only after her mother's death from Alzheimer's. Haunted by their unrelentingly difficult relationship, Cowan began piecing together her story by investigating a carefully prepared memoir her mother had sent to "acknowledge her role" in their painfully adversarial relationship. The manuscript offered details of the years she had spent growing up at the Foundling Hospital, later renamed Coram after its 18th-century founder, Thomas Coram. The author's mother--renamed Dorothy Soames--had suffered multiple traumas in her life as a foundling. From the foster mother who instilled a fear of Coram from an early age to the cruel nurses who routinely humiliated her and thought nothing of using physical violence as a disciplinary tool, Dorothy's caretakers showed her little love. Her later education prepared her only for "a life of service" and offered no latitude for "independent thought." The only refuge in her otherwise dreary and isolated existence was friendship with a fellow foundling. After reading the memoir and visiting the hospital, Cowan realized the terrible impact of her mother's past, partially to blame for her raising her daughter according to a "warped, dystopian version of what she imagined a proper British upbringing to be." The author's historical analysis of the misogyny and classism that underlay the institution's outwardly humanitarian mission makes this memoir especially compelling. Well-researched and highly personal, the book presents a fascinating narrative tapestry that both informs and moves. A candidly illuminating debut memoir. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
