Rating: 
Summary: A heartfelt and beautifully written memoir...
Review: Sarah Saffian's book is a testament to the fact that memoirs are more-than-ever worth reading. It's engaging and informative, spirited and unique, and I'm buying a dozen copies to give away as holiday presents this December!
Rating:
Summary: Triumphant, Passionate!
Review: I loved this book. I found Ithaka to read like a non-fiction novel for everyone, adopted or not. It is a captivating story of a young person's striving to reconfigure the definitions of family and identity. It's a story in which we can all find deep meaning. Read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: a good short story
Review: Unlike many of the other reviewers, adoption is not a part of my personal history. I found the author's intense focus on her thought process to be tedious. Perhaps if adoption were something that I have a strong connection to, I would have found her slow (and I mean SLOW) personal growth to be more compelling. I pretty quickly got the point that it took her a long time to feel ready to meet her birth parents, but she kept on saying it over and over and over...While reading some sections, I really wondered why the author ruined a very good short story/magazine article by turing it into a full length book.
Rating: 
Summary: Story is technically well-written, but left this reader cold
Review: As an adoptee who found my birthmother in college, I was surprised how little I related to Saffian's experience. "The lady doth protest too much" kept running through my mind as I read the memoir. I found it hard to believe that at age 23, she was as secure as she claims she was before the fateful phone call from her birthmother. While I understand firsthand why finding one's birthparents is disorienting, I can't understand or empathize with the author's bizarrely hostile reaction to her birthparents, especially her father. Her writing is certainly impressive technically, but it didn't impress me as honest. She spent too much time brandishing her credentials and critiquing others, but not enough time asking herself serious questions. I wanted to know why she was so disgusted by her birthfather's emotional nature; was her hostility a means of cloaking a secret wish that her adoptive father had been more emotionally available? Or perhaps that she could be more emotionally open herself? Saffian's aloof, superior voice became progressively off-putting. Although I dove into the book in the beginning, my interest in the narrator--crucial in a memoir--lagged and I started skimming. While her story was at times intriguing, mainly because her reactions were so extreme, ultimately it didn't enlighten or move me. Saffian's book seemed less a memoir about her experience of being found by her birthparents than it did a case study of a self-involved, controlling personality.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written book, unlikable person who wrote it.
Review: As an adoptee, my adopted mother gave me this book out of compassion and support of my own search. I have to say that the writing style of the book is truly excellent. What amazed me was how emotionally disturbed the writer was throughout the story. I kept thinking, "what a blessing to find your birth parents are normal, wonderful, caring and sensitive people!". Many adoptees find their parents as drug addicts, in prison, victims of rape or dead. This woman seems to be a fragile glass house, protected and coddled her entire lifetime. I kept thinking, "How would you have reacted with the worst possible situation given your reaction to the best?". A well told story to be certain, but I was dissapointed by the lack of grace the writer had in coming to know these people. I admit we all blunder through life, but I would expect by your late twenties, a wiser surefootedness and grace.
Rating:
Summary: If you are a "found" adoptee, you should read this book
Review: Also, if you're a birthparent thinking of searching, or an adoptive parent whose (adult) child has been found by a birthparent, you will gain much understanding from the ideas expressed in this book. I am an adoptee who was found by my birthmother, and the author's writing put into words many of the feelings I had been struggling to express.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful, reflective, and reassuring.
Review: While many adoption books focus on trying to attain a reunion, "Ithaka" focuses on the personal and emotional impacts after the reconnection.
With one sudden phone call, Sarah is thrust into the reunion experience quite unprepared for the questions and issues that come along with it. The story of her personal journey through this roller-coaster experience will give any adoptee insight into what one goes through after the initial reunion event. "Hello! I think I'm your mother," is only the beginning of a long personal journey. In reading "Ithaka" I was able to reflect on my own journey that continues years after the initial re-connect.
Adoptive parents, too, will find this story comforting and reassuring. Even though the adoptee is searching and discovering, the real base of self continues to be with the Mom and Dad who raised you. This comes through clearly in this story within Sarah's inner conflicts.
The general reader not involved in the adotion triad would still find this to be an interesting look into the reunion experience without having to go through the "How to's" of reunions.
Overall this is an easy read, and a thought-provoking story.
Rating:
Summary: A real page turner
Review: I am an adoptee who found both my birthparents. I read Itaka in the midst of that process. I found this book very interesting, full of humor and very honest. It was a great book which was hard to put down. 2 thumbs up!!
Rating:
Summary: A Must for Adoptees
Review: I am an adoptee (age 34) and found the book to be extraordinarily timely. I met my birthparents two years ago, and the roller coaster of emotions is overwhelming. Sarah Saffian's ability to articulate the things I am feeling is uncanny. I checked this book out of the library, then had to get my own copy so I could underline and highlight. For those who've said she is self-absorbed, that's the point. So many huge pieces of her life and her identity were altered without her consent, before she was even born. How can a person help but question her feelings about each of the parties involved, about her obligation to each, her connection to each, and how each affects her. Given the magnitude of the revelation (Hi - I'm your birthmother, and I married your birth father and you have a set of "full-blooded" siblings.) Sarah deserves the opportunity to wallow around in self-absorbed questions about her identity.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, honest, rare
Review: This book perfectly addresses the question we will all (not just those in the adoption triad) spend our lives asking: what has made us who are? Ms Saffian has poetry and great insight on her side as she takes us through her own experience, generously allowing us in and incouraging us to reflect upon our own lives. I was delighted to discover a book about a personal story that is so accessible and so helpful. Everyone should read this book.
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