2023/10 Discussion site for Dani Shapiro's Inheritance--Mod's Choice

[Jan]

This is Dani Shapiro's memoir about finding out at age 54 that she's the result of artificial insemination on her father's side. Not a spoiler: the suspense is in finding out how this came to be and what it will mean subsequently in her life. Also, and this has been the subject of some other books, what reproductive medicine was like in the early 1960s.

I heard the author in 2019 at the last local book festival before the pandemic paused it and finally got to read this compelling book. Would like to get to talk about it and hear what you think.

[Jan]

I'm surprised there are no comments on Inheritance but maybe I shouldn't be, with so much going on, and this book being from 2019, i.e., bp ("before the pandemic"). So it can really seem like a long time ago. I will say I found it easy to read, easy to concentrate on; it just "read itself." I thought the author was a very brave woman, considering her lifetime lived in the face of people looking at her strangely or telling her she did not "look Jewish." She did not know until 54 that she was donor conceived. Also I admired her ability to be so honest on the page, without which there could have been no memoirs and I think no fiction either, although I haven't read her fiction. (She has a new novel out now and is appearing soon at my JCC's book festival.)
Thoughts, anyone?

[Jan]

The Jewish Book Council hosted a Zoom interview of Dani Shapiro today about both her memoir Inheritance and her new novel Signal Fires. The novel sounds good and now I want to read it too! :)