Baby, We Need a New Title

by Constance Lambson on October 4, 2010

Scott Simon appeared at Elliott Bay Book Company at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 3, to read and sign. He’ll be at Clover Park Technical College on Tuesday, October 5th, in support of NPR and KVTI 90.9 FM.

Reviewing books is a potluck. Authors don’t write to order, publishers launch new releases according to their own peculiar calendars, bookstores schedule readings with absolutely no consideration for the reviewer’s social life, and editors would very much like for the reviewer to get on the stick already, please and thank you. In any particular week, a dozen or more different books are being toured in Seattle, and which ones get reviewed often has more to do with chance than personal preference.

For instance, I would never have picked up Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other, Scott Simon’s paean to adoption, if FedEx hadn’t delivered it to me, direct from the publisher. I’m not planning to adopt–I sublimate my caretaking impulses to where they rightly belong: houseplants and pets. I don’t know Scott Simon from Adam, despite my longtime NPR habit. And the title is cheesy enough to serve on crackers.

Which is a damn shame, because Baby is a terrific memoir. Simon is thoughtful, funny, and generous, passionate and angry, sad, joyful, and charming. In addition to telling the story of his little girls’ adoptions, which at times (as Simon, himself, notes) is disturbingly commercial, Simon allows other families and adoptees to narrate their own diverse histories. The result is a deeply moving inquiry into the nature of family. And when I say “deeply moving” I mean that I wept, cried my proverbial eyeballs out, and went back for more.

It doesn’t hurt that Scott Simon can write. In addition to hosting NPR’s Weekend Edition, Simon is an award-winning journalist, and the author of two novels. He has the mechanics of telling a story down solid. What is more rare is the ability to transmit emotion, to share empathy across the gap of years and pages, from author to reader. Simon does this, without resorting to tricks. The reader doesn’t feel manipulated, but instead is warmly included in the narrative. Simon has written a love story, and invited the reader to fall in love, too.

Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other is intended to make the case for adoption to people who want children. I still don’t (ever, in a million, billion years) plan to adopt any animal that can’t be kenneled, and I’m okay with that. Simon’s book nonetheless opened my heart and my mind to the powerful affect adoption can have on the lives of the people involved.

Filed under Literature
  • Beckett Franklin Gray

    I was captured by the story myself. Just really great writing and the personal story really is touching.

    Folks in the adoption community are concerned that it doesn’t take the adoption agenda further to a place of healing and understanding.

    My perspective is a little different. I don’t mind reading thoughtful autobiographies from any part of the triad. I find that we all have perspectives and places that we exist. I find it even more important that we understand that our positions are different (and even moreso at different times of our lives).

    Oh, and I write on the subject…which has me thinking about it all constantly. Thanks for the post!

    http://www.wix.com/beckettfranklingray/home