Garden Hopping: memoir of an adoption
Jonathan Rendall Canongate, 184pp, £9.99
ISBN 1841955965
Jonathan Rendall's boyhood pastime of garden-hopping later seemed an "apt metaphor for this business of finding one's 'real' parents". He discovered he was adopted at the age of seven, but claims not to have cared very much until, bored, divorced and with nothing better to do, he decided to look up his real mother. "I wasn't obsessed," he insists. "I was just curious. It was no big deal."
But it soon becomes clear that his life has been dominated by his adoption. The book is a collection of short, episodic memories that reveal textbook patterns of behaviour. As a child, being reminded about his adoption was the only thing that could make him cry. As a teenager, he fell in love with just about everyone and was the only one who wanted to be a father at 16. Both his first girlfriend and first wife had been adopted. When his marriage fell apart, he sought out different, unorthodox family structures at every turn.
Rendall runs the risk of being seen as callous by including a number of letters that were never sent (his real mother even threatened legal action). But, in fact, his book is arrestingly incisive: confessional without being self-indulgent; angry but not too self-pitying; tempered with some deliciously bitter humour. A sharp, concise and engaging read.
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