Janice Erlbaum

I hardly know where to begin. I have been holding my breath through the entire last half of the book. I am not sure if I was holding it for Janice, or for Sam.

This is the most emotionally provoking book I have read in a very long time. It reads like a novel, but it is all too real. Each page is filled with compassion, yearning and vulnerability. The author is brutally honest about herself and her feelings, her motives.

To say that I could not put this book down is an understatement. Even show more now, when I have come to the end of the book, I know that it is not a true ending. How can it be? I think I will always wonder what has become of Sam. Will she always be hovering on the edges of the lives of women who cared enough to bring her into their lives, and truly care for and about her? How many more will there be?

I have been angry with Sam, and felt compassion for her. I have mentally raged at Janice, and wondered why she could not see! And I have understood how she could be drawn in. Most of us want to do good things. We want to be helpful. I feel so much a part of what happened here, due to the remarkable storytelling abilities of this author. Before the end of the day I will have ordered her previous book, Girlbomb from Amazon.

I urge everyone to read this book, in order to be reassured that there are still more good people than bad surrounding us. There is love and selflessness., kindness and generosity. There is hope for us, due to the kinsness of strangers. show less

So many memoirs like this one degenerate into a sickly sweet mess, as the author tries to make herself look like the Polly Purebred victim so that the reader can sigh and feel oh-so-sorry, and whee, nice catharsis for everyone. Yawn. But Erlbaum avoids all that. She doesn't spare herself her own critical eye, and I'm damned if I didn't come out liking her a lot for all her faults. She also avoids sensationalizing and exaggerating her own story -- the other common trap of adolescent memoirs show more -- so that this memoir rings very true. Even if you feel sort of tapped out on memoirs, I'd recommend picking this one up. show less

I probably won't have anything new or original to say that others haven't already said, but I want to add my voice to the chorus of praise for this book. The author's ability to be honest with herself and with her readers about the roller coaster of emotions she felt throughout her relationship with Sam is inspiring, amazing, and commendable. This book, which I had to keep reminding myself was a memoir, truly does read like a novel, and a very, very good novel at that. I wish that more show more *fiction* authors were able to engage and entice readers the way Erlbaum does. The pace was perfect, there are not too many asides or extraneous details, and there was this absolutely delicious sense of dread and foreboding before the revelation that kept me entranced. I will be heartily recommending this fantastic book to friends. It's a story that will stay with me for a long time, as I saw a lot of myself in Janice. show less

Erlbaum, Janice. Have You Found Her, A Memoir. New York: Villard Books, 2008.

I often say "I couldn't put it down" to describe a page turner; a really good book. I just finished Janice Erlbaum's Have You Found Her and I have to say first, it only took me six hours to read. Only six hours because not only was it a real page turner, but it was a too-good-to-stop page turner. It was a roller coaster of a read. Emotional and unpredictable. I felt every one of Janice's highs and lows like they show more were happening to me.
To sum up the plot is to sell it short. To say it is the story of a woman's journey through a relationship with a troubled homeless teen is to leave out the heartaches, the loves and hates, the hardness of being homeless, the despair of addictions. In addition to asking "what next?" from chapter to chapter the reader is also left asking "how is this possible?" Janice's experiences are so fantastic and her feelings vibrate so strongly that every page is a live wire of tension. This is not your typical "soul searching" memoir for the author, her subject...or the reader.
I only found one discrepancy with the detail. Janice finds out her homeless friend has been discharged from a hospital back into the care of the shelter where Janice is a volunteer. Because if "rules" Janice must wait two days until her schedule volunteer day (Wednesday) before she can seek out the girl. Yet, when Janice arrives at the shelter she says she knows Sam was discharged on Wednesday when in fact, according to detail, it would have been a Monday (page 73). This is a small oversight in an otherwise fascinating and haunting story. show less