Woman of Interest

January 1, 2024

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 writer turns to nonfiction in a personal story of finding her birth mother during the COVID outbreak, a stranger she worried might be dying in South Korea. Writing it like a mystery novel, O'Neill details what happens when the PI she hires vanishes and she picks up the investigation herself. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2024

O'Neill, who was adopted from South Korea when she was an infant, initially had no desire to learn about her birth parents. Growing up in New England with a boisterous Irish American family, her firecracker personality and unconventional philosophy of life saw her reach her mid-30s with a PhD, teaching at Vassar and having authored two novels: The Hopeful and Quotients. When COVID swept the world, she quarantined with in her Brooklyn apartment and read news articles about older South Koreans left to die alone. This sparked an investigative journey to find O'Neill's birth parents and ensure they did not meet the same fate. Told through a stream-of-conscious narrative style, her memoir includes obscure vocabulary choices and nonlinear tangents, which might confuse some readers. Others, however, will embrace her memoir, which resembles what experimental jazz would be like if it were a written narrative. Funny, shocking, and emotionally charged, the memoir takes readers on her journey of self-discovery and finding what family means. VERDICT Suggested for readers who enjoy poetic memoirs, such as Lindsey Frazier's Oh Love, Come Close and Jane Wong's Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City.--Katy Duperry

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2024
An account of the author's search for her biological mother in 2020. "I was thirty-three, adopted, Korean born, New England bred. Profession: writer. And because no one made a living writing anymore, profession: professor....I had not evaded taxes, but I had evaded children." O'Neill clearly lays out the situation at the beginning, noting that her desire to find the woman who birthed her and gave her up is twofold. First, she writes, "my life depended on this missing person. I mean she had been one of my mothers." Second, she sought "confirmation that I was a woman still able to write a new narrative into her life." The two-time novelist and Vassar professor filed a missing person's report for her biological mother. The ensuing conversations with a private investigator are entertaining. At the end of the year, O'Neill traveled alone to Korea for a few weeks to meet her mother. "I did not know what I was really doing," she writes, "but perhaps a person of interest never did." The narrative sometimes gets mired in the author's self-focus, and the latter half describes meeting her mother in person. "She was there," writes the author. "Right there. And the impression she gave was of an idling Xerox machine. To reach her seemed impossible." The author's details and nuanced layers of longing feel genuine, vulnerable, and vivid. Even after the end of the search, her investigation continued: "As it turns out, autobiography can't be abandoned as easily as a bad alibi, or a child. At a certain point, the question is not, What will you do next? It is, once more, How did I do what I did?" This is not a story of redemption, but it is heartbreakingly human. A propulsive, occasionally meandering memoir.

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Starred review from April 29, 2024
Novelist O’Neill (Quotients) delivers a riveting account of her search for her birth mother. Fresh off a breakup in 2020, a 33-year-old O’Neill, who was raised by adoptive parents in New England, became newly curious about her origins. She entrusted a private investigator with what limited information she had about her birth mother, but after a promising start, the investigator ghosted her, leaving behind a tangle of loose ends. Determined to see the inquiry through, O’Neill used a DNA database to locate a blood relative, who then virtually introduced her to her mother’s siblings in South Korea. Though Covid-19 cases were peaking at the time, O’Neill traveled to Korea on the advice of these relatives, who promised that they’d introduce her to her mother. While O’Neill completed a sleepless 10-day quarantine, she reflected on how her search was related to her own doubts and fears about becoming a mother. The narrative culminates with O’Neill and her mother finally meeting at a tense dinner party, an experience that left O’Neill with more questions than answers about the circumstances that led to her adoption. In cool, noir-tinted prose shot through with wit and compassion, O’Neill presents her inquiry as a sort of metaphysical detective story. Readers will be enthralled.

May 15, 2024
Two-time novelist O'Neill (Quotients, 2020) writes, "I had an interest in getting my story straight." Born in Korea, she grew up in New England with Irish American parents and a younger adopted Korean brother. She became a Vassar professor "because no one made a living writing anymore." After reading about a stranger's lonely COVID-19 death in Korea, she obsesses that her birth mother "could be dead or dying alone." Her mission commences; "now I had to locate my woman in a pandemic that had miniaturized life by way of lockdowns and social distancing protocols." She hires a PI who allegedly caught one of the FBI's Most Wanted. She discovers her adoption social worker committed suicide on Mother's Day ("close enough to . . . check the box on dramatic irony"). A DNA database leads her to a third cousin's father, who becomes O'Neill's middleman to her birth-family tree. She arrives in Korea in December 2021; finding truth proves elusive. Despite O'Neill's intense self-examination (and impressive vocabulary), her excessive details, distracting asides, and disturbingly misplaced and comical insertions ultimately diminish a potentially illuminating reading experience.

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