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Summary: More Reviews:
Review: "This harrowing but ultimately joyous book...[is told] with a combination of wit, raw emotion and skill...The insight the author brings to bear on the couple's mutual journey has a powerful effect." Publishers Weekly "Written with vitality and wit, it is intended for all adultsÐthose whose laps are full and those whose laps remain to be filled, Recommended." Library Journal
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Summary: unflinching candor
Review: Adoption stories so often are simplistic: We were miserable because we wanted a baby. We adopted a baby. Now we're happy as clams. Tra la. Smolowe's gift to this burgeoning genre is her honesty about the long and difficult road to adoption. It's not just a question of home visits and paperwork; it involves the pain, in every sense, of infertility and infertility treatment; strains on a relationship; struggles for every would-be mother. The author's portrayal is not always chipper or cheery, but it is always searingly truthful. That's a rare accomplishment and makes "An Empty Lap" worthwhile reading.
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Summary: Sad
Review: After seeing an excerpt of this book in a recent Reader's Digest, I read it and discovered a very different story than I'd expected. An Empty Lap is engrossing, but not uplifting, despite its positive ending (which is obvious from the cover photograph). I appreciate the author's candor, but the overly-detailed account of her tempestuous marriage and depression quickly becomes annoying in a book about infertility and adoption. Because I have been struggling with infertility for ten years and have recently started the process of international adoption, I began this book with an open mind, expecting to feel a great deal of empathy for the author and her husband. Instead, the more I read, the less I liked both of them and the more sympathy I felt for their adopted daughter. The author's premise is that she "upended a stable relationship to try to make room for a child." This premise is not supported by the rest of the book, which reads primarily like a diary of this couple's volatile and unstable relationship. The author recounts multiple arguments between her and her husband, his bad temper and inconsistent reactions, yet asserts over and over that he will be a good father. One gets the idea that she is still trying to convince herself as well as the reader. For the author, a child appears to be a thing to have or a goal to be reached, and she admits some concern about her motives for motherhood. She even lies in the home study about her depression, which was bad enough that she was contemplating suicide before being medicated. Yet she continues to pursue adoption, settling on China because it is the only viable option left to a couple in their 40's and 50's. The author admits she'd "barely given China a thought" beyond being the place to pick up her baby, and worse, her husband's prejudice against Asians is mentioned several times throughout the book. Upon studying their daughter's photograph for the first time, he makes critical comments about the child's baldness, ears and even questions whether she has "mongolodism." (The last comment is, significantly, absent from the excerpt in Reader's Digest.) Where is the concern for this child's ethnic heritage and the complex issues related to international adoption? Where is the sense of love and responsibility that leads people to adopt a child? This book is not really helpful to those dealing with infertility and adoption. Its true focus is on a dysfunctional relationship between two selfish people who somehow adopt a child- despite constant friction in their marriage, their ages, their lack of appreciation for adoption and their ambivalence toward parenthood. The happy ending when they bring their daughter home and become doting parents seems disingenuous. Nevertheless, I deeply hope that the child (who is now five years old) is having a good life and that the author and her husband have matured enough to be the parents she deserves.
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Summary: This book saved my life!
Review: After three years of infertitlity, two failed adopiotns and a lifetime of heartache, I was at the end of my rope. This book gave me hope and courage and validated every single feeling I had during this time of my life. I have read several books dealing with adoption, and this is the one I identified with most. This book holds a special place in my library. You must read it!
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Summary: Adoption and Parenthood
Review: An Empty Lap captures the wide range of emotions people will experience when on the journey to become parents. The book is highly informative in a number of areas including fertility options and adoption. The presentation blends the personal, arduous journey of the author in her attempts to become pregnant with the hard science behind fertility medicine today. When the fertility options are finally abandoned, the excruciating realities of the adoption bureaucracies are brought to light. The adoption process is explored first domestically and then abroad. While many of the harsh disappointments of adoption are presented, the author also shares the extreme joys that accompany a successful adoption (in this case, a miracle child from China). Jill Smolowe is an award-winning Journalist who writes with extreme clarity and heightened passion. This book is a great read for anyone considering adopting a child, knows someone who is considering adoption or fertility procedures, or is just plain interested in a lucid explanation of the challenges of both processes. I feel confident in rating this book with 5 stars. It is truly the work of a professional writer.
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Summary: Courageous book
Review: Anyone dealing with infertility or considering adoption will be well served by reading this book. The author does not sugar coat. She is honest and open, which is as refreshing as it is painful -- and leaves you feeling much less alone. Nor is she afraid to speak about the way these issues threaten to tear up the very bases of a marriage. This is not an easy book to read -- but you come out the other end much wiser about the true nature of the issues.
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Summary: Scary and Unrealistic
Review: As a story, this book was interesting. But, as a true-life story of adoption, it was horrible. This is a tale of two people who obviously can't stand one another adopting an innocent unsuspecting child into their selfish and inconsistent relationship, NOT an accurate depiction of adoption. As an adoptive parent myself, I can assure you that this is not realistic. First of all, most agencies would have turned them down flat because of Joe's frequent divorces, Jill's mental health issues, and their combined ages. Secondly, no social worker would have approved them a home study if they weren't 100% positive about the adoption and their relationship. This book makes it appear as though just anyone can and should adopt a child. It also makes it appear as though children are an entitlement, not a privelege. By the end of the book, I was so disgusted with Joe's bad attitude, abusive behavior, and selfish demeanor that I was ready to write him a letter telling him so. PLEASE, if you are considering adopting internationally, DO NOT read this book when making your decision. It isn't like this in the real world! My guess is that most of the people giving this book 5 stars aren't adoptive parents!
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Summary: You can't have a baby--a numbness beyond desperation.
Review: Baby Lust Do you know how it feels to want a baby so much that every other activity in life, everything you've worked for and planned for--job, friends, family, marriage, seem hollow as a tin can? To be in emotional pain so extreme when you see a pregnant woman's stomach or newborn baby that the pain becomes physical? To feel the numbness beyond desperation that makes the oblivion offered by tall buildings attractive? To subject your husband and yourself to invasive and humiliating medical tests and debilitating drugs? To question your own sanity and the grip this baby lust has on your emotions? To follow every possible avenue toward adoption? To travel halfway around the world with a suitcase full of money? To burst into tears when you realize that your lap is finally filled with your own child? Read Jill Smolowe's book, An Empty Lap, and you will. Though the book's cover tips the reader off to the ending, this grandmother for whom conceiving was about as difficult as breathing is for most people, stayed up all night and sobbed so hard she woke her partner when the plane carrying Jill Smolowe, her husband Joe Treen, and their new daughter, Becky Smolowe Treen into the new world of family life, left the ground. This book is for everyone: those who have children, those who want them, those who don't, those who haven't thought about it. Smolowe's story is an unflinching account of a love strong enough to deal with the unexpected and emerge triumphant told in a style guaranteed to keep you reading just one more page before you turn off the lamp. When you finish the book and finally do, Jill, Joe and Becky are there with you in the dark room and you're left wondering what's next for them. If we're lucky, maybe Jill will give us that book too. by Karen Blomain Wrighters Lake Road Thompson, PA 18465
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Summary: Very disturbing--not what you'd expect.
Review: I agree with the review who felt this was a "must read" for infertile couples, but not in the same way they probably thought it was. Rather, it's an excellent way for a couple to examine their true motives and feelings toward having children. This book is truly a worst-case scenario. Jill Smolowe comes across as a narcissistic woman caught in the 90s dictum that women must have a husband, children, and snazzy career in order to feel fulfilled. She approaches infertility treatment and adoption the way some couples approach buying an SUV, complete with an "options" list of what they want and don't want. (I'm serious--she actually spends several pages going through exactly what qualities she wants in a child. She says she doesn't want to adopt an African-American child because she fears "having the politically correct forces breathing down our necks." Why not just admit that she's uncomfortable with the idea?) She has a checklist mentality to her whole life: do this, do that, and she seems furious and put-upon whenever anything threatens her agenda. While Jill seems merely self-absorbed and irritating, her husband Joe Treen comes across as absolutely sickening. As a man, I felt embarassed reading about him. He has terrible mood swings, belittles his wife constantly, and yet she seems to think they are a "mostly happy" couple with "no fundamental problems." Huh? Throughout the book, this couple fights about absolutely everything. Joe says one thing one day and another the next, and seems to just threaten to leave whenever anything doesn't go his way. (Which is often, because he is so moody, angry and inconsistent that he doesn't appear to know what he wants from one hour to the next.) Some of the story she tells about Joe are absolutely chilling: after living together for several years, she gives him a deadline to "decide" on marriage. On the appointed day he gives her a "twisted smile" and says, "No." When he suggests they buy a house together, he fumes that "Jill expects all sorts of trappings to go with a house, including marriage." She supports him for four years while he writes a novel, but forces her to turn down two overseas jobs that she wanted. At one point they make a "five-year-plan" in which they'll start having kids and looking for a house in the burbs. A few months later, of course, Joe is saying, "We've never discussed having kids." His thoughts on children are equally disturbing: "A kid would just be a noisy pain in the neck;" "Why would I want to raise someone else's kid?" "We're not having a baby. If we ever have a baby, it will be your baby." "I'd prefer a kid I don't have to explain all the time" (this when he's telling his wife why he'd prefer a Paraguay adoption to China). Days before they are to leave for China, he's still threatening to walk out on Jill: "I'll go to China and help you get a kid, but then I'll probably leave." When she mentions that he could sell some stock to help with their adoption travel, Joe's response is, "This is your baby. I thought you were paying for it." They reject the first referral they are given because the baby is "too small," feeling that the Chinese government is punishing them for being Western journalists. This is the man that the author asserts will be a "Superdad?" The happy-ever-after ending does seem contrived. For Becky's sake, I hope it's true, though I had to wonder when the author writes about having to cancel a trip with Joe and Becky because, "I'm not about to let anyone think I'm going to let motherhood get in the way of my job." In reality, this is a very sad book, more the story of a dysfunctional marriage than an adoption. Despite "parenthood" being in the title, that subject rates barely a few pages toward the end. My wife and I have struggled with infertiility and gone through the adoption maze ourselves. The home study process exists not to make the parents jump through hoops (the author scorns the process and seems put-out by it) but to ask adoptive parents to clarify the special issues that adoptive children, and particularly internationally adoptive children, have. Clearly, these two did not.
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Summary: Ugh!
Review: I agree with the reviewer who found this couple "loathsome and selfish." I am also struggling with infertility, and hoped to find some words of wisdom in this book. What I got was a picture of a marriage that the husband clearly didn't want to be in and that seemed incredibly dysfunctional. I admire Ms. Smolowe's honesty, but she clearly planned to bring a child into a marriage with an "absentee live-in father." Why? I was also never fully convinced that she really wanted a baby, as opposed to feeling obligated to "have it all." I was happy to see that it all seemed to work out in the end (the "baby-saves-marriage" theme) but I wonder if there isn't more to the story. It was most helpful and inspiring when she stuck to their attempts to make the adoption decisions, but the marriage was so troubling that I questioned the author's sense of responsibility.
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