Good Likeness

by Paul Arnott

Paul Arnott's candid memoir of the quest for his roots, touching on the wider social issues of the adoptive process.Paul Arnott has two very early memories. One is as a two-year-old having a bath in a hotel sink in Tenby; the other, a Bromley afternoon, when Mr and Mrs Arnott told Paul that 'his real Mummy and Daddy couldn't keep him' - & that they had adopted him. Then, for 30 years, he barely gave his adoption a moment's thought - until the observation of the likeness between his son & himself provoked a quest to find his own biological parents ... What he discovered was a near-complete family in Ireland - his parents had later married & had four other children, lighting a candle in his name every day for 33 years.A GOOD LIKENESS weaves historical, political, religious & psychological thought into a personal narrative of the hopes, 'what-ifs' & discoveries of the author's quest. He talks to those of his parent's generation who did not yield to the pressure to abandon the illegitimate & to the children with very different stories to tell, as well as priests & politicians, newfound families & the supportive or unreconciled adoptive relatives.

Genres: Adoption

Hardcover

First published June 7, 2007

Reviews

[Parikhit]

Honestly I expected the book to give me a wholesome account of adoption, the emotions, the questions, and being a book which was a personal account it did not do justice to what my expectations were to begin with. The author decides to look for his real parents after a friend makes a remark about how his toddler looks like him-triggering a set of thoughts about his likeness, his resemblance to his natural parents. Then begins the search, the discovery, the reconnection-but amidst all this there is hardly any account of the adoptive parents' perspective. I was surprised. I have friends and family who have adopted and I have seen the pain, the happiness, the expectations they go through and I would have liked to hear their account which the author decides to skip. There is the stigma of society, Catholic Church governed rules and the complicated post adoption process but the book seemed scattered and did not converge for me.

Moreover, there is more information about the English and Irish rivalry, football teams, and a mundane visit to a small obscure town in Ireland inspired by the authors reading of Anthony Trollope's book which made no sense or did not connect well.

I really reckon you can skip this book for I am sure there would be more deeper writing on adoption.

[RJC]

More discussion on Irish and English relations in places. This is not the adoptive parents' perspective.

[Sandra]

This is a well-written account of an adoptee’s journey, not in the least bit self-obsessed or mawkish. Paul Arnott knows he was adopted but doesn’t stop to think about what it means until in his thirties with his own children. He writes to his adoption society and gets a letter back with information about his birth parents. “The section of my mind concerned with the concept of identity, which had been lying under a sheet in the garage since I was born, suddenly roared into life.”
He shares the emotional ups and downs of his search, which finally takes him to a second family in Ireland.
“Instead of being Paul Arnott, 11/11/61, I was now Rory Brennan, 11/11/61.” It was this sentence that really grabbed my core.
He was Rory, not Paul. “It must be inconceivable to those raised by their blood parents, surrounded by grandparents, sisters and brothers, that a man in his thirties had never given any serious credit to the potency of family resemblance.”
I read this book as research for my novel ‘Ignoring Gravity’, the story of journalist Rose Haldane who finds out at the age of 40 that she was adopted as a baby.