Bastards: A Memoir, by Mary Anna King
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Bastards: A Memoir, by Mary Anna King
Free PDF Ebook Online Bastards: A Memoir, by Mary Anna King
"A stirring, vividly told story of a young woman's quest to find the family she lost . . . an impressive debut." ―Peter Balakian
In the early 1980s, Mary Hall is a little girl growing up in poverty in Camden, New Jersey, with her older brother Jacob and parents who, in her words, were "great at making babies, but not so great at holding on to them." After her father leaves the family, she is raised among a commune of mothers in a low-income housing complex. Then, no longer able to care for the only daughter she has left at home, Mary's mother sends Mary away to Oklahoma to live with her maternal grandparents, who have also been raising her younger sister, Rebecca. When Mary is legally adopted by her grandparents, the result is a family story like no other. Because Mary was adopted by her grandparents, Mary’s mother, Peggy, is legally her sister, while her brother, Jacob, is legally her nephew.
Living in Oklahoma with her maternal grandfather, Mary gets a new name and a new life. But she's haunted by the past: by the baby girls she’s sure will come looking for her someday, by the mother she left behind, by the father who left her. Mary is a college student when her sisters start to get back in touch. With each subsequent reunion, her family becomes closer to whole again. Moving, haunting, and at times wickedly funny, Bastards is about finding one's family and oneself.
Bastards: A Memoir, by Mary Anna King - Amazon Sales Rank: #318429 in Books
- Brand: King, Mary Anna
- Published on: 2015-06-22
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.00" w x 5.90" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
Bastards: A Memoir, by Mary Anna King Review “This searing book explores how identity forms love, and love, identity. Written in engrossing, intimate prose, it makes us rethink how blood’s deep connections relate to the attachments of proximity.” (Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree)“With Bastards Mary Anna King has crafted a wise and indispensable meditation on the true nature of family, the dislocations of adoption, and all the vital species of love. She brings light to them all.” (Steve Almond author of Against Football: One Man's Reluctant Manifesto and Bad Poetry)“An impressive debut. . . . [Mary Anna King’s] prose moves with lyrical wit and cultural texture as she persists with all of her protean self to figure out the nature of family and the deepest human connections amid trauma and confusion.” (Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate)“Is it OK to repeatedly burst out laughing in the middle of a crowded coffeehouse before explaining to fellow customers, ‘It’s this hilarious new book about a crazy family that gave away their children the way other families send out Christmas cards?’ If not, I apologize for all the interrupted coffee breaks and lift my cup to Mary King and her glorious Bastards, a rib-tickling yet deeply moving debut memoir. Only a writer with King’s keen eye, expert storytelling skills, and from-the-heart honesty can turn a childhood this deficient into a book so rich.” (Franz Wisner, author of Honeymoon With My Brother)“Mary Anna King’s Bastards is funny and wise and very entertaining. If you think you had a weird childhood, well, King’s book will put that right into perspective. At the same time even readers who are cynical on the subject of Family will be persuaded, somewhat, that in the last analysis it’s a good thing.” (Blake Bailey, author of The Splendid Things We Planned)“In Bastards, Mary Anna King offers a moving portrait of the struggle to create a family out of little more than the imagination. In scene by finely wrought scene, punctuated by bursts of lyric intensity and hard-won humor, King reminds us that a good story is not in the ending but in the questions, that in this life the only resolution we get, sometimes, is acceptance, and that this can be enough.” (Nick Flynn, author of Another Night in Suck City)“At turns hilarious, at turns heartbreaking, Bastards is the story a young girl who bears painful witness as each piece of her large family is chipped away. King emerges as a keen observer and a phenomenal storyteller. Bastards is a stellar memoir to be savored by fans of the The Glass Castle and The Liar’s Club.” (Jennifer Vanderbes author of Strangers at the Feast and The Secret of Raven Point)“As I read Mary King’s extraordinary memoir, Bastards, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club. King has the same unflinching eye, the same ability to inhabit her child self while trying to make sense of her world. At turns funny and heartbreaking, Bastards never fails to surprise, impress, and dazzle” (Ann Hood, author of The Red Thread, and The Italian Wife)
About the Author Mary Anna King was born in southern New Jersey and grew up in Oklahoma City. After studying English literature at Colgate University, she moved to Los Angeles, where she lives and writes.
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Most helpful customer reviews
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful. A memoir of a family in pieces---with powerful messages about nature vs. nurture and love By Suzanne Amara I read this memoir as fast as I possibly could, eager to hear what happened next in Mary Anna King's life. Born to parents who kept having children but weren't able for a variety of reasons to actually raise them, she is in many ways alone, although she has six siblings. Her life takes her from a housing development full of single mothers in New Jersey to Oklahoma City, where she is raised by her grandfather and step-grandmother. The contrast between her mother's unconditional but messy love and her grandparent's steady but colder caretaking brings up many issues of what love is, and what a child needs to flourish.The last four girls in Mary's family are all put up for adoption, and much of the second half of the memoir is about gradually meeting them all and trying to form a family with full siblings that non-the-less have lived lives all very different from each other. It's an amazing inadvertent experiment in nature vs. nurture. As Mary says, chaos seems to find her sisters, even though they were raised in homes very different than her own. The family trait of forms of reckless living, drinking and questionable choices finds them all to some extent, but in addition, more positive traits come through---almost all of them can sing, like their ne'er-do-well father.Few people have lived a life like the one described here. Few people would want to, but I think almost anyone will want to read about it. It's an amazing story, skillfully told.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. it's a memoir - if it's a sad read for adoptive parents or you have opinions on ... By T.B To the low star reviews: guys, it's a memoir - if it's a sad read for adoptive parents or you have opinions on how the parents lived their life it means that they book engaged you - so it's a good book, it just didn't give you the lovey dovey feelings you're used to feeling when reading a novel. Most memoirs don't.The novel is well written, kept me engaged, and I did love hearing the details of the story of Mary King and her siblings. Mary was so open and raw with descriptive of her feelings throughout her childhood and well into adulthood, and truly painted the picture of every scene for the reader. The story is not ideal for families - but in life not all things are butterflies and lollipops, and trials and tribulations and our reactions to them are what guide us in life to grow and make decisions. Mary showed the positives and negatives of every situation from many different perspectives (parents, adoptive parents, siblings, adopted siblings). A great book. Glad I read the NPR article that lead me to purchase it!
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful. A sad read for adoptive parents By Debra This memoir is incredibly well written and the author is clearly very skilled. Unlike other memoirs with titles like "Bastards" this is not a story of horrific abuse or intense neglect. Instead, it's a story of a child working through the idea of her parents being unable to care for her, and being raised by her grandparents who don't attach to her. The bulk of the story is about her reuniting with her 6 siblings who have all ended up being cared for by other people (except one she grew up with) and all end up with sad lives even though many of the siblings should have had "happy" endings.It is essentially a story of how adoption has inherent issues related to children feeling unlovable. If there's any take away from this book, it's that we need to take a serious look as a society at kids who are not raised by their biological parents (either through divorce, adoption or any other means) as children who are seriously at risk for negative life outcomes regardless of how much their adoptive parents or remaining biological parent love them.It was 3 stars for me because I thought it lacked any sort of introspection, which can be important to hold a memoir together. For example, at the only graphic point in the book she tells a story about how she is sexually assaulted when she is 5. She doesn't remember this until she talks to her Grandma (who doesn't attach to her emotionally) who reminds her that this had happened. The only way the grandma knew was that she had taken her to see a doctor because something was wrong "down there", but no one ever reported it and nothing was ever done.The point of the story is that it's a turning point for her when she realizes she was never going back to New Jersey because it really wasn't safe there. Instead she "chooses" to live with adults who can take care of her, even though they're emotionally distant, and feels like she abandoned her birth mom, even though she had no power as a child. There's so much to unpack here about the scars that would leave on a child, but she doesn't. Instead she seems to attribute all of her difficulties to her grandmother's lack of affection and choices she seems to think she herself made as a child, even though she really didn't.Throughout the book the wounds of feeling unloved are evident but not explored, and she never seems to truly address or resolve the wounds that she has. She was "rescued" from New Jersey but how does she feel that there was no retribution for her assault? She's angry at her grandmother for sending her brother away but yet feels conflicted because she wants to be taken care of. She internalizes all of this as an adult with no closure about the trauma she experienced and how that might affect her. Truly all of the adults in her life failed to care for her - piano lessons don't compensate for love.So on that point I found the memoir incomplete. I wanted more redemption or closure or something. When I finished this, I wished more than anything that she would spend some serious time with a therapist working on understanding that nothing is wrong with her personally.
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