Rating: 
Summary: Desperation does not make for a good model
Review: I really disliked this book's portrayal of a woman so desperate for a baby that she would jump head first into the first adoption "opportunity" that came her way and then bemoan the constant difficulties she got herself and her shell-shocked, though supportive, husband into. A much better look at international adoption can be found in A World of Love by Maggie Francis Conroy. I definately do not recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyed it!
Review: I really disliked this book's portrayal of a woman so desperate for a baby that she would jump head first into the first adoption "opportunity" that came her way and then bemoan the constant difficulties she got herself and her shell-shocked, though supportive, husband into. A much better look at international adoption can be found in A World of Love by Maggie Francis Conroy. I definately do not recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent and reassuring memoir
Review: The best thing Janice Cooke Newman could have done for her book was to change everyone's names and market it as fiction. Had she done so, this tale of a shallow, self-absorbed Bay Area yuppie who trots off to Russia with her wiser, loyal husband to adopt a boy she's smitten with after her very first contact with an adoption facilitator would doubtless have earned critical plaudits as perceptive and arch satire. Unfortunately, she wasn't that smart. Having myself gone through an unsuccessful, sadder attempt to adopt from Russia, I add my second to the other commentators here noting that her descriptions of the process are accurate but that this is definitely not the way to do it. But there's something else about this book that stands out that I feel compelled to point out. Is it as obvious to any other reader as it is to me (but not her) that Ms. Newman adopted out of some serious unresolved issues with her late mother that she tries to deal with not just by becoming a mother, but her own mother? I have no doubt she's a good mother, but this may cause some issues as Alex grows up. To help the reader grasp this, I have included references to the page numbers so you can just leaf through the book instead of buying it. The first sign of this is in the book's title. Nowhere in the volume does she actually tell you what the Russian word for snow is ("sneg"). Since this word points to her son's biological origins, that which Newman needs to deny to enhance her own motherhood, it is easy to see why she's so hostile to the Russian language and especially the Cyrillic alphabet (pp. 76, 93, 104, 124, 161, 167 and 168. The last one is particularly egregious: "K's and C's and backwards R's that looked as if they would scratch and tear at my throat if I tried to pronounce them.") Earlier in the book, before her mother dies, Newman recounts no less than three instances where the two of them stopped communicating (pp. 15, 17 and 20. The one on 17, where the daughter's well-intentioned gift of a book to help her mother through cancer treatment rubs her the wrong way and leads her to hang up the phone. On page 145, Newman herself gets angry at a friend's well-intended gift of a book, again echoing her mother). And her self-identification with her mother is again explicit early on and continues throughout (pp. 6-7, 8, 15, 82, 114, 115, 197, 201). The infamous bath scene (pp. 201-4) is, as noted below, one of the most embarassing scenes in the book. I sure wouldn't have wanted to have lived through it, and if I did you can bet I wouldn't write about it. Not only does Newman insist on replicating her mother to the point of traumatizing Alex, in the face of her husband's correct advice about how you bathe a child fresh from an orphanage, she then gets into a screaming match with him, treating the poor boy like a prize toy in the process and displaying the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old. What was she thinking? Was she thinking? Then there's the curious reappearances of penises (Alex's, p.6; her husband's, p. 48; a statue, p. 115) and feminine protection products (pp. 25, 170 and 212), which are mostly superfluous to the narrative. One could assume, especially in the case of the latter, that these are simply a way of flaunting her "chick writer" credentials, but at 40ish, she's a little too old to have to do that. They symbolize the biological process of reproduction, a reminder to the author that she has not fully assumed her mother's mantle since her son came through adoption. For equality's sake, she makes sure Alex never forgets he's adopted, either (OK, not wrong to do that but it seems like the way they did that was too forceful). On p. 229, there is one last attempt, in a conversation between her and Alex, to resolve the birth/mother issue that even Newman realizes is "insufficient." Despite her effort to give the book a cutesy, upbeat ending, this insecurity haunts everything else. I finished this book with the uncomfortable feeling that I'd been sitting in on her therapy sessions (if she has them). If I, with just pop-psychiatric credentials, can pick all this out, what might a real professional see? All this said, this book is still not without some value. She has enough perceptiveness as a traveler to note the details of contemporary Russia which ring accurate to anyone who's been there. And, any reader undergoing the adoption process will get an idea of what to expect, if not how to actually do this. However, she does not earn the praise of being a good writer with this book. If she is, it's offset by her lack of storytelling skills. The long passages of novelistic dialogue that give an unwarranted sense of the portentous to conversations that include more than their fair share of non sequiturs and sometimes border on the Pinteresque, the flat characters (one is relieved when the Russians show up, on p. 71, as they bring a refreshingly cynical sense of humor to the narrative: "That used to be KGB headquarters," "What do they do there now?" "Same thing.") are just the most obvious obstacles to the reader. She is, though, telling one very good story, just not the story she thinks she's telling.
Rating:
Summary: A harrowing story with a happy ending
Review: This book wants to make me jump into a plane and bring home one of the thousands of children in Russia who need a family. Even though we now know that the author has successfully adopted her son, it is impossible not to feel overwhelmed by her and her husband's traumatic (and I'm sure very costly) efforts to get past unhelpful and corrupt adoption personnel operating in a country thrown into political chaos. The Newman's story also conveys an interesting and all-too-human point: Once one falls in love with a particular child (even if only seen on a photograph!) one wants that child and no other. But I'm glad the Newmans didn't give into their despair and kidnap the baby and transport him home through Finland! I hope they will banish from their minds the heartbreaking weeks trying to claim their son and rejoice around the clock in their great fortune.
Gisela Gasper Fitzgerald, author of ADOPTION: An Open, Semi-Open or Closed Practice?
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