alinaborger's review
2.0
By "Joseph," the author means Jesus' adoptive father. Behind the title, Brooks Hansen has drafted an infertility and adoption memoir with a voice more reminiscent of Paul Reiser than of a man who considers infertility "his personal Vietnam." After nine or so rounds of failures with IVF, he and his wife fly to Siberia to adopt possibly the only perfectly healthy infant ever to come through the Russian orphanage system. They meet him, and he's delightful... though for no outwardly discernible reason, they decide not to go through with it. They meet another baby the next day at a local hospital in Tomsk. The once-preemie now "sturdy" redheaded boy shares his first name with a Russian composer Hansen admires and the couple goes on about the business of adopting him.
Don't get me wrong, I've done this infertility and adoption thing, too. And I know that there are all kinds of ways we parents create signs and wonders out of the smallest things--we're all looking for the invisible red thread of the Chinese proverb. But I guess what I am saying is that Hansen's memoir ultimately fails to make me sympathetic, even to his miracles.
Don't get me wrong, I've done this infertility and adoption thing, too. And I know that there are all kinds of ways we parents create signs and wonders out of the smallest things--we're all looking for the invisible red thread of the Chinese proverb. But I guess what I am saying is that Hansen's memoir ultimately fails to make me sympathetic, even to his miracles.
laura_sorensen's review
3.0
A very interesting book, both in terms of having a man's perspective of fertility problems, and in noting the grim (oy vey!) realities of fertility and adoption.
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