Book Review: Casting Towards Ithaka
by Sarah O'Neill
Imagine waking up one ordinary, almost-mundane Friday morning: twenty-three years old, a college graduate, with a steady boyfriend and a job as a columnist at a well-known New York newspaper. You wake up, go to the gym, and eat breakfast… then the phone rings. "Sarah, my name is Hannah Morgan. I think I am your birthmother."
So begins Sarah Saffian's autobiography, Ithaka, yet this phone conversation is neither the beginning nor the end of her own life journey. She is an adoptee deprived of a search for the birth family she hadn't even considered seeking. It shatters her feelings of self-identity, and launches a search to redefine herself: as an adoptee, as a daughter, as a person. It is only when she is able to identify herself as an individual, separate although inter-dependent on family and history, is she able to finally meet her birthmother, Hannah, her birthfather, Adam, and two younger biological siblings - three long years after the first call. Saffian's journey towards that moment is marked by an arduous and oftentimes painful psychological and emotional evolution, an intangible mixture of the many different shades grief, joy, sadness, anger, and, perhaps, most importantly, revelation.
In Homer's Odyssey, "Ithaka" is the name of Odysseus' homeland, from which he is estranged for many years, until he is able to learn some lessons and thus ennoble himself. In a similar way, Saffian's Ithaka tells of displacement, her continuing struggle to redefine her personal concept of "home," and the strength and joy she experiences when she finds hers. Yet, Ithaka, is more than Sarah Saffian's autobiography. In her attempts to narrate, rationalize, and ultimately understand herself, her family, and her own personal history, Saffian addresses, with frank, lucid prose interwoven with excerpts from letters exchanged between her birth family over those three years, many of the universal questions intertwined with adoption. Her story discusses the many ways a person can be a mother through the many mothers in her life; her birthmother Hannah whose circumstances forced to put her first child up for adoption, her adoptive mother who died when she was six, and her "Mom," her supportive and loving stepmother. At the same time, her fathers play an active role in her search: her adoptive father is a constant, supportive presence and her birth father's letters are touching and reaffirming. It explores the meaning of family, and both the loss of and reaffirmation of individual identity involved in the exploration of that family.
While Saffian narrates her own personal story with humor, compassion, strength, and honest directness, and elucidates on her own emotions and thoughts related to her experiences, she never preaches and rarely if ever allows her experiences to become the standard for others. Instead, the story is presented in an entirely autobiographical manner... it is her story, it is the story of her families. Ultimately, how Saffian's story is interpreted rests in its reader. Moreover, the book will be interpreted by different people in different ways: an act one reader may see as touching another may see as intrusive, what makes one person feel uplifted may bring another to tears. This dichotomy epitomizes the adoptee' emotional search for self. This book is recommended for anyone who wants to further understand the personal aspect of adoption, search, and discovery: members of the Triad, family and friends of adoption and the adopted, and anyone else who just wants an amazing, emotional read.
