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| Without a Map: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Meredith Hall
Publisher: Beacon Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $5.53
You Save: $8.47 (60%)
New (43) Used (25) from $5.53
Avg. Customer Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 10260
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0807072745
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.609
EAN: 9780807072745
ASIN: 0807072745
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Thank you for looking at Bookscorner1. May have shelf wear and remainder mark.
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Product Description
A New York Times Bestseller and 2007 Book Sense Selection
Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father?in her own father's hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.
"Hall emerges as a brave writer of tumultuous beauty."
?Alanna Nash, Entertainment Weekly
"First-time author Hall pens a haunting meditation on love, loss, and family . . . Hall colors outside the lines with this memoir, full of unexpected twists and turns."
?Caroline Leavitt, People (rated 4 out of 4 stars)
"Beautifully rendered."
?Elle (a nonfiction readers' pick)
"A modern-day Scarlet Letter."
?Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
"A poignant, unflinchingly assured memoir . . . exquisite."
?Robert Braile, Boston Globe
"Meredith Hall's magnificent book held me in its thrall from the moment I began reading the opening pages . . . a fluid, beautifully written, hard-won piece of work that belongs on the shelf next to the best modern memoirs."
?Dani Shapiro, author of Black and White
"An unusually elegant memoir that feels as though it's been carved straight out of Meredith Hall's capacious heart. The story is riveting, the words perfect."
?Lauren Slater, author of Welcome to My Country and Opening Skinner's Box
"Hall's memoir is a sobering portrayal of how punitive her close-knit New Hampshire community was in 1965 when, at the age of 16, she became pregnant in the course of a casual summer romance . . . Hall offers a testament to the importance of understanding and even forgiving the people who, however unconscious or unkind, have made us who we are."
?Francine Prose, O Magazine
"Meredith Hall's long journey from an inexcusably betrayed girlhood to the bittersweet mercies of womanhood is a triple triumph-of survival; of narration; and of forgiveness. Without a Map is a masterpiece."
?David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and God Laughs and Plays
"Each chapter of Without a Map is polished and elegantly written . . . the structure is shapely and the book yields poignant insights."
?Juliet Wittman, Washington Post
"Hall's memoir, Without a Map, is a devastating story of what happens when a person is exiled from her own life."
?Frances Lefkowitz, Body + Soul
"I'm awed by Meredith Hall's wisdom and integrity, by her gorgeous prose that deepens my understanding of resilience and love, of loss and forgiveness. A courageous and brilliant memoir."
?Ursula Hegi, author of The Worst Thing I've Done
"Without a Map tells an important and perceptive story about loss, about aloneness and isolation in a time of great need, about a life slowly coming back into focus and the calm that finally emerges. Meredith Hall is a brave new writer who earns our attention."
?Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and For the Time Being
"Elegant pprosed make Without a Map an evocative, thought-provoking read. But Hall's heartrending candor on love, loss and hope turn this first-time author's book into a one-sided coversation among new friends."
?Jennifer DeCamp, St. Petersburg Times
"A compelling, painful, hopeful story."
?Barbara Jones, More Magazine
"Without a Map tells a stunning story of exile and ostracization . . . Her memoir is a rare and clear glimpse into the social mores of the mid '60s, and reveals the state of shame many families faced when an unmarried daughter became pregnant."
?Liz Bulkley, The Front Porch, NHPR
"An unbelievable read."
?Robin Young, Here and Now, NPR
"Meredith Hall's memoir is so well written that it was hard for me to accept that the book had to end."
?Tina Ristau, Des Moines Register
"Painfully honest and beautifully written . . . Meredith Hall has managed to distill courage from raw pain, and then somehow write this gem of a book about the experience . . . A stunning book . . . You must read it."
?Lola Furber, Maine Women's Journal
"Meredith Hall is like a Geiger counter ticking along the radium edge of these recent decades. She gives us self as expert witness?Without a Map is smart, sharp, and redemptively honest."
?Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies and My Sky Blue Trades
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
4.5 Stars... The price of getting "outcast" lasts a lifetime May 5, 2007
42 out of 45 found this review helpful
In "Without a Map" (245 pages), the author Meredith Hall retells the consequences she faced upon becoming an unwed mom at age 16, growing up in a conservative surrounding in the mid-60s. Immediately outcast by both her parents, she is literally set on a path of life that she never intended or prepared for, "without a map".
The author vividly paints how, after giving up the baby for adoption immediately at birth, she aches for some, any, sympathy and support from her parents. She never gets it, and eventually she leaves her family at age 18 to make her own life. One of the better chapters (which do not follow chronologically, incidentally) is when she decide to walk around in Europe and the Middle East, "without a map", for what must be a period of months, if not a year, all by herself and without hardly any money, sleeping wherever she can find a spot.
At some point in her 20s or 30s, Hall introduces her mom to a guy she is dating. During what seems to be a pleasant meal at the restaurant, at some point her mom pulls the guy closer and says (in front of Hall!): "Thomas, I feel compelled to warn you away from my daughter. You don't know what you are getting into." Her mother then continues eating and chatting as if nothing has happened. Can you imagine that? Up until the very end of her monther's life, the author hopes for some sign of ackowledgement or forgiveness from her mom.
Lest you think that this book is just one big hole of self-pity and sorrow, there are also great uplifing moments, none better than when the author describes her reunion, 21 years later, with the child she gave up for adoption at birth. In all, I found this book absolutely compelling from start to finish.
Closer to 5 stars May 14, 2007
31 out of 35 found this review helpful
Meredith Hall's intriguing memoir "Without a Map" is a singularly poignant and interesting book from a literary point of view and both heart-wrenching and affirming from an emotional point. At first, the non-linear aspect of her story touched on the annoying but then it all came together; in many ways, the absence of chronology added to its uniqueness among memoirs. It was as if in the telling, she suddenly remembered something that made her go back and then move forward again.
As a story of society's reaction to young girls "who got in trouble", it brought back the horrible lack of compassion and empathy so rampant in the fifties and early sixties, when I was also growing up. Boys were understood to have no sexual control and girls were held solely responsible for keeping themselves "pure". Combining this with the lack of full sexual education, a phenomenon that has come back to reality under Bush's "Abstinence only" sex ed, could lead only to what it did in Meredith's life. Pregnant girls were shunned as tramps and sent away to have their babies in hiding and to give them up without ever seeing them. The professionals believed these young girls would easily forget their pasts and go on with their lives. No one except the young girls themselves ever imagined that they would remember their babies in stark detail every single day of their lives. Adoption itself was usually held in privacy between the obstetrician and whomever he deemed worthy of having a baby, often to disastrous consequences, as in this instance.
We don't often hear from these young women again except in what are portrayed as happily-ever-after reunion shows on TV so Meredith's memoir fills an extreme gap in our knowledge. She courageously shows us that the horror of being turned away by the very people invested with the responsibility for loving us unconditionally never goes away, that it permanently and pervasively marks every aspect of one's life forever. In the face of all that, however, the one thing that so stands out about Meredith is her unending capacity for understanding and forgiveness of the very people who least deserve it, her parents and siblings. From her early attempts to completely dissociate herself from her very essence before pregnancy through roaming the Middle East by herself to her years as a middle-aged mother of three grown sons and college writing teacher, who comes to love and embrace living by herself no longer mourning what was so brutally taken from her, Meredith's memoir is beautifully written, beseeching compassion, and determined to stay with the reader for a long long time.
In response to one reviewer who gave this book only one star and claimed Meredith was selfish and whiny and let her father off with no pain, I'm not sure you read this book in its entirety. There was not one instance "poor me". She bravely lived a life none of us should ever have to. She did not let her father off at all. She gave him two choices - to tell her he loved her all along and ask for forgiveness for his mistakes or to do what he ultimately did, to believe Meredith understands what he did and why and beg her to love him anyway. She realized that his cruelty to her and inability to apologize was all about him and would remain that way. He never looks good and never will. And Meredith finds she and her children don't need him after all.
If I have one complaint, it is a small one. Meredith tells us nothing about the father of her later children, the father she divorced after ten years of marriage. Although missing in his entirety, he is not really missed. I am merely curious about the one man who enabled Meredith to find love and the strength to have more children.
I strongly recommend reading Meredith's story and suggest that you will not easily find another as original and inspiring.
 Absolutely a must-read April 11, 2007
23 out of 24 found this review helpful
This is an astonishingly beautiful memoir. I don't frequently get misty-eyed at books, but this made me cry on the subway. This is one of those rare memoirs that manages to move from retelling to a full sensory experience of another person's life. Again, beautiful.
A wonderfully written memoir about a good girl turned shunned pregnant teen turned regretful, unforgiving, dweller-on-the-past April 21, 2007
23 out of 33 found this review helpful
The end of the world as sixteen-year-old "good" girl Meredith Hall knows it, occurs in 1965 when she becomes pregnant. Oblivious for four months, her mother only learns of her condition after she is expelled from her small New Hampshire high school. Banished to the home of her remarried father and stepmother, who discourages any goodwill between dad and daughter, she is relegated indoors and sent to her room during the couple's dinner parties. At the end of a long and difficult labor and delivery, she is drugged while the baby is whisked away unseen into the arms of an adoptive family. The vivid recollections of her somewhat independent, sometimes adventurous, always well-told life-happenings are engaging, but the underlying theme of perfect-girl-done-wrong when shunned as a pregnant teen, the shameful fate of most expectant girls of that time, is overdone. Hall writes, "I believe that we are accountable, that what we do stays in the world." If true, her unrepentant mother gracefully suffered enough for all of those who turned their judgmental backs on her while. Her father, however, got off scot-free. Hall's readable, engrossing memoir is as good, if not better, than The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Also worth reading: A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas, The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery, Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu and Christine Mathieu, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, There is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene, and Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.
Moving and Amazing April 17, 2007
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
Finally I understand what the word "evocative" means. Hall's prose is like liquid, and she creates pictures and feelings without ever being wordy or sentimental. I thought I would like this book because it was about a woman in New Hampshire, and I thought I would be able to relate to that. Instead, I loved this book because even though Meredith Hall's experiences are nothing like mine, her humanity is exactly like mine, or any other human's. The book's nonlinear structure is unusually well-executed and the story surges forward no matter what direction time is flowing in from chapter to chapter. The book weaves together mortality, relationships, loneliness, nature, and love without romanticizing the people, places, and feelings that Hall uses to explore her life, and the idea of life at all.
I can't wait to read her next book.
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