Library Journal - Audio
★ 06/10/2024
After her father's death, Canadian novelist Maclear (Birds Art Love) takes a serendipitous DNA test, revealing that the man who raised her was not her biological father. To learn more, she enlists the help of a genealogical specialist—her "search angel"—to uncover possible relatives. Simultaneously, she navigates the secrets and lies from her childhood and her mother's past, doing her best to extract seeds of truth while struggling to maintain equilibrium with her mother. The secret of Maclear's paternity acts as a catalyst for the exploration of the mother-daughter bond. While her mother has difficulty expressing emotion, she is an avid gardener, and Maclear uses their mutual love of plants as a subtle language to communicate her feelings. The narrative is poetic, full of lyrical descriptions of events and emotions all tied to plants. As a tribute to her mother's heritage, Maclear ties the story together with Japanese words and phrases that evoke the seasons. Maclear's voice brings a vibrance to this self-narrated work, and her cadence furthers the lyricism of her prose. VERDICT A heartfelt memoir of a woman trying to better understand her parentage and herself. It is a must-have for all biography collections.—Katy Duperry
AUGUST 2023 - AudioFile
Kyo Maclear gently shares the story she uncovered after she learned that her English father's DNA does not match hers. Her candid tone nurtures a desire to accompany her as she unearths secrets of her dying mother--in particular, her parents' infidelities--and struggles to find compassion and forgiveness. Maclear's curiosity comes through clearly when she describes gazing at pictures of her Japanese mother's young beauty and searching for aspects of her own face in her biological father's Russian Jewish features. With Maclear's distinct delivery, the motif of gardening that runs through the audiobook brings listeners--and the author--respite and insights. Both her writing and reading allow listeners to experience the richness of truths blossoming in the light. S.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
05/22/2023
Novelist Maclear (Birds Art Love) meditates on genealogy and family secrets in this impressive memoir. In 2019, three months after the man who raised her died, Maclear discovered through a DNA test that he was not her biological father. She first sought the truth about her parentage from her Japanese mother, whose health was rapidly declining, but was forced to find most of the answers herself. In short sections named for the 24 seasons of the traditional Japanese calendar, Maclear unravels her family’s history, exploring how her surrogate father’s infidelity, her parents’ infertility, and her mother’s secrets influenced her own views on love and family: “Marital love is extreme. It is stamina,” she writes. “Marital love with complications or doubts is not a fiasco. It is a marriage.” Throughout, Maclear finds beauty in the natural world, tapping into interests, such as gardening, that she inherited from her mother: “I tend the soil for my sons now. In my mother’s shadow, I am learning how love vacillates.” As she uncovers previously unknown Jewish ancestry, she expands her understanding of her own mixed-race heritage, and the ways blood relationship have and haven’t impacted her sense of self. Maclear’s precise, hypnotic prose will appeal to readers of Margaret Renkl. This quiet story lingers. Agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
"Many memoirs have examined issues of paternity and parental infidelity, but Maclear's stands out due to elegant writing and insightful musings on the making and shaping of identities, always with the garden behind her to provide an anchor... A lovely meditation on the hidden past and the blossoming present."Kirkus Reviews
"In this magnificent, searing memoir, Kyo Maclear takes us on a journey that is at once singular and utterly universal. What forces contribute to who we are and who we become? And what happens when the story we know to be true of ourselves is uprooted, unearthed? In poetic language that cuts to the bone, Maclear grapples with these questions and the result is a profound reading experience. I will never forget it." Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance
"Unearthing is simply staggering. Maclear takes the shocking revelations of a DNA test and transforms them into a mind-altering and supremely generous exploration of kinship, selfhood, memory, and the roots we share across time, space and species. A quantum leap for an already brilliant and profound writer and thinker." Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything
AUGUST 2023 - AudioFile
Kyo Maclear gently shares the story she uncovered after she learned that her English father's DNA does not match hers. Her candid tone nurtures a desire to accompany her as she unearths secrets of her dying mother--in particular, her parents' infidelities--and struggles to find compassion and forgiveness. Maclear's curiosity comes through clearly when she describes gazing at pictures of her Japanese mother's young beauty and searching for aspects of her own face in her biological father's Russian Jewish features. With Maclear's distinct delivery, the motif of gardening that runs through the audiobook brings listeners--and the author--respite and insights. Both her writing and reading allow listeners to experience the richness of truths blossoming in the light. S.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-05-24
Playing on metaphors from her avocation as a gardener, Maclear chronicles her discovery of “a secret buried for half a century.”
The author’s Japanese mother closely held that secret until Maclear’s English father died, after which she learned that he was not her biological father. The identity of the person who was, an older man about town in London who raced cars and owned a restaurant, surprised her, her old-country English identity replaced by a Russian Jewish bloodline with hitherto unknown siblings all over the world. That discovery prompted this pensive meditation on what lies beneath the soil of ancestry as well as the ways in which people attempt to find happiness and meaning in life. While her mother had never intended to be a “good cultural ambassador or an Elegant Japanese Lady,” she did invest a great deal of herself in a wild patch of land that defied the minimalism of the idealized Zen garden. Maclear draws meaning from that habit of getting one’s hands dirty in the Earth while pondering the thought that, as her mother said, a person becomes a person not just by remembering, but also by forgetting. Maclear’s response, among many: “Dear parents, the deep knowledge you tried to bury and erase still managed to leave something behind.” Though seldom snarky, the author is often indignant, working hard to muster the sympathy needed to understand why her parents would have disguised a long-ago affair. Many memoirs have examined issues of paternity and parental infidelity, but Maclear’s stands out due to elegant writing and insightful musings on the making and shaping of identities, always with the garden behind her to provide an anchor. “I remember a filmmaker friend telling me we get new family in the middle of our life so we remember our identities are always dying and regenerating,” she writes. “To remind us: we can be green again.”
A lovely meditation on the hidden past and the blossoming present.