Musings on a Book Discussion of The Inheritance

The operative word here is "book!" What happens when what should be healthy talk about the merits of writing style or point of view devolves into over-sharing of personal anecdotes and diversion from the task at hand? Yesterday I attended my library's discussion of a memoir, the third in author Dani Shapiro's oeuvre, a fascinating psychological look at Ms. Shapiro's deepest thoughts and insecurities. Unfortunately, I sensed that too many considered opinions went unshared.

"The Inheritance" is rife with potential talking points apropos of twenty-first century concerns about privacy rights and the digital age.   

 This memoir is gorgeously written and remarkably personal so I expect that how readers receive the book may have much to do with whether or not they come to like Dani Shapiro herself or lose patience with her. 

What happened is that, well into her fifties, established in a successful career as novelist, memoirist, lecturer, mother, and partner, Ms. Shapiro, on a lark, sends her DNA into one of those mail away companies expecting to have all her notions about her learned background, steeped in Orthodox Judaism, confirmed. Instead she discovers that her beloved father was not, in fact, her biological dad. Shapiro is devastated by this news - wrecked really - and becomes obsessed with revisiting her life story (her folks are both dead) based upon this new information. Suddenly each strange, disparate incident, or overheard conversation takes on new significance. 

With the help of her journalist husband and some librarian level internet searching skills she is able to track down the unsuspecting man who, back when he was a student at Penn in the fifties, donated sperm to the Farris Institute in Philadelphia, a place that offered help to infertile couples but was later found to be using dubious methods of insemination and operating without medical licensing. 

What follows is Dani's uncomfortable pursuit of her biological father pushing for a meeting that he is initially unwilling to accommodate. Having been promised anonymity long before the advent of DNA testing, he is appalled at the thought of hearing from potentially hundreds of children who may be running around the country with his genetic code and who now, thanks to modern science, might come calling. And here's where the conversation got tricky. Whose rights take precedence? How much should adult children be told of their origin story? Do genetics diminish the importance, the devotion and love of the parent who raises us? The old nature vs. nurture conundrum comes front and center. Who are any of us really? And does it matter?

I suspect that each of us in the discussion room had definitive thoughts we may have wished to share but without the discipline to keep us on track and with no open ended questions to prompt deeper conversation, unfortunately our moderator let us down. The book will not let you down. It is an amazing examination of familial love and the ramifications of family secrets and lies coupled with a portrait of a woman in search of identity and ultimately realizing that she is who she always was. And that's enough.