ITHAKA: A Daughter's Memoir of Being Found

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: Why not use the truth?
Review: What I don't understand about this book is how it and the Amazon reviewers of it can be so brainwashed by the adoption industry that they do not respect Sarah Saffian's natural parents as being such. The demeaning word "birth mother" is used not only throughout Sarah's book but also in reviews of it. In addition, Sarah seems to refuse to acknowledge her parents as what they really are: her parents. Sarah's lack of thinking for herself and her inability to understand and respect natural family relationships is sad indeed. May she one day take a few steps away from denial and from the adoption industry, which she obviously supports, and realize how terrible mother and child separation is. I'd like to read the book that she writes after she wakes up from her adoption fantasy.

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: Well written, but a bit detached
Review: I read Ithaka on the heels of meeting my own birthmother and I must admit, that I was a bit put off by Ms. Saffian's detachment throughout the book. Granted, I too am very grateful for what my adoptive parents have done for me, and I would not trade them for anything in this world, however, I am also grateful for my birthparents for making the choice of giving me up for adoption. I too experienced a myriad of emotions when seeing my birthmother for the first time in 25 years, even though she and I had communicated on and off since I was twelve. However, whenever she expressed any emotion to me I did not feel threatened or overwhelmed, as did Sarah, when Adam, her birthfather expressed his raw emotions to her in his letters. That was a bit of a letdown and it did certainly turn me off. Overall, the book was very good and well written.