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Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses

by Paula McLain

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1463189,131 (3.36)3
This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next fourteen years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years-a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club. McLain's beautiful writing and limber voice capture the intense loneliness, sadness, and determination of a young girl both on her own and responsible, with her siblings, for staying together as a family.… (more)
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    The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (BookshelfMonstrosity)
    BookshelfMonstrosity: Like Family is a memoir that traces the difficulties of being a foster child in California. Like The Language of Flowers, it provides readers with a moving account of young girls who triumph over adversity to find happiness as adults.
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Paula and her two younger sisters were abandoned by both parents in 1965. They were placed in a series of foster homes, ending in one that lasted several years. Throughout that time Paula hoped that her mother would be able to take them back, but mostly she rode with the time. She adapted to the situation.

The memoir is vivid and does not ask for sympathy. It is simply a recording of what it was like. Naturally, it wasn't all fun and games. At times it was anything but.

I couldn't help but wonder if there ever was an attempt to find adoptive parents, or if the agencies simply hoped that the biological parents would be able to take over at some point. I wonder this because it seems it might have been a better way to go and may have been truly in the best interest of these children. As it was, they grew up "in the system" and survived, possibly as well as can be expected, maybe even better than most.

Not much navel-gazing here. Worth reading. ( )
  slojudy | Sep 8, 2020 |
Very touching book. It's sad the lives that some children lead. Good example as well of how parents really can only do what they know how to do. They can only be as good a parent as they know how to be. Sadly this book is universal, not just for foster children. Excellent writing. I felt as though I'd been there, been with Paula and her sisters. ( )
  tuff517 | Jun 1, 2006 |
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This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next fourteen years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years-a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club. McLain's beautiful writing and limber voice capture the intense loneliness, sadness, and determination of a young girl both on her own and responsible, with her siblings, for staying together as a family.

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