www.richardjespers.com
  • Home
  • Books
  • Journals
  • Blog

Philomena, the Book

7/28/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
         I am soft sift
    In an hourglass—at the wall
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift
    And it crowds and it combs to the
         fall . . . .
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Born July 28, 1844

My Book World

Picture
Sixsmith, Martin. Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search. New York: Penguin, 2013.

After viewing the recent film Philomena several times, I sensed there was much of the narrative missing, and when I read Sixsmith’s book, I saw that my hunch was correct. While the film, with Dame Judi Dench starring as Philomena, focuses mostly on the mother’s search, Sixsmith’s book must otherwise spend nearly two-thirds of the narrative on Michael Hess, or Anthony Lee, Philomena’s long lost son, and her son’s search for her. The narrative, on film, might have been better served if it had been made into a miniseries largely because it is the two stories combined, the fact that mother and son search out each other, that makes it so compelling and poignant.

Anthony Lee and Mary McDonald—whose unwed mothers are allowed to "nurse" them while still toddlers, in the questionable haven known as Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, County Tipperary, Ireland—are both adopted in 1955 by a family from St. Louis, Missouri. The babes’ birth mothers, Philomena and Margaret, full of shame, and manipulated by many of the sisters, are coerced into signing away their rights to ever see their children again.

So what kind of life does Anthony Lee/Michael Hess have in America? On the one hand, he becomes part of a family that is able, financially, to care for him and Mary. However, two of Michael’s older brothers seem noncommittal at best, and a third one is downright hostile; he physically and emotionally abuses Michael. Michael’s adoptive mother is nurturing, if in a clinging manner, and Doc, his adoptive father, is, at turns, aloof, then ever meddling, trying to make a "man" of Michael.

Sixsmith does an admirable job of recreating Michael’s life from the time he enters America until he dies from AIDS in 1996—with a great deal of help from Michael’s long-term partner, Pete Nilsson. In the years between, the reader learns of Michael’s education, his time at Notre Dame, where he seeks help from a less than sympathetic priest about his sexuality. The reader learns of Michael’s education on the streets, particularly in Washington, DC, where he pays his own way through law school at George Washington University (his father having withdrawn all financial support when Michael refuses to attend law school at Iowa University). A furtive life of seeking out sex with men that begins in Chicago during his undergraduate days then escalates in the DC area, where bars abound and he discovers than many other underlings who work in congress are gay.

The entire narrative—Philomena’s wrenching story in the abbey, where some of the nuns treat the mothers and their children despicably, Michael’s childhood, his secret life as a gay man working for the Republican National Committee in the nation’s capital, a mother and son's mismatched search to find one another—is not only heart wrenching, but it serves the reader in a number of other ways, as well. Sixsmith’s narrative exposes a brand of Catholicism that hopefully has been exorcised from the world. He also revisits the AIDS crisis as it occurs during the Reagan years, when, because its victims are largely gay men, the US government elects to do little or nothing about it, creating a race in which modern medicine desperately attempts to catch up, something it has never quite been able to do.

We must remember . . . all AIDS stories, like all holocaust narratives, create a condition in which one is too many and a million are not enough. They will be with us always, and we must listen to each one.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2015


Picture
READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"


Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Watch for more podcasts later this summer!
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
    My Long-Playing Records My Long-Playing Records
    ratings: 1 (avg rating 5.00)


    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011



    Categories

    All
    Acting
    Actors
    African American History
    Aging
    Alabama
    Alaska
    Aldo Leopold
    Andy Warhol
    Arizona
    Arkansas
    Art
    Atrial Fibrillation
    Authors
    Authors' Words
    Barcelona
    Biography
    Blogging About Books
    Blogs
    Books
    California
    Cancer
    Cars
    Catalonia
    Colorado
    Cooking
    Creative Nonfiction
    Culinary Arts
    Deleting Facebook
    Ecology
    Education
    Environment
    Epigraphs
    Essays
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Fifty States
    Film
    Florida
    Georgia
    Grammar
    Greece
    Gun Violence
    Hawaii
    Heart Health
    Historic Postcards
    History
    Humor
    Idaho
    Iowa
    Journalism
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Literary Biography
    Literary Journals
    Literary Topics
    Literature
    Maine
    Massachusetts
    Memoir
    Michigan
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    M K Rawlings
    Musicians
    Nevada
    New Hampshire
    New Mexico
    New Yorker Stories
    Nonfiction
    North Carolina
    Novelist
    Ohio
    Pam Houston
    Parker Posey
    Photography
    Playwrights
    Poetry
    Politics
    Psychology
    Publishing
    Quotations
    Race
    Reading
    Recipes
    Seattle
    Short Story
    South Carolina
    Spain
    Susan Faludi
    Teaching
    Tennessee
    Texas
    Theater
    The Novel
    Travel
    Travel Photographs
    True Crime
    #TuesdayThoughts
    TV
    U.S.
    Vermont
    Voting
    War
    Washington
    Wisconsin
    World War II
    Writer's Wit
    Writing


    RSS Feed

    Blogroll

    alicefrench.wordpress.com
    kendixonartblog.com
    Valyakomkova.blogspot.com

    Websites

    Caprock Writers' Alliance
    kendixonart.com

    tedkincaid.com
    www.trackingwonder.com
    www.skans.edu
    www.ttu.edu
    www.newpages.com
    www.marianszczepanski.com
    William Campbell Contemporary Art, Inc.
    Barbara Brannon.com
    Artsy.net
WWW.RICHARDJESPERS.COM  ©2011-2025
                    BOOKS  PHOTOS  PODCASTS  JOURNALS  BLOG