Without a Map: A Memoir by Meredith Hall
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Book Reviews of Without a Map: A Memoir
Book Review: Too redundant, too many feelings
Summary: 3 Stars
While Meredith Hall in "Without a Map" tells a sad, interesting story, I found myself struggling to get through the book. Undoubtedly, she was treated abysmally by her parents and friends when she became pregnant at 16 years old. This family and community "shunning," along with giving up her baby for adoption, stays with her through the course of her life. Very sad, poignant stuff. But, she reminds us, practically every paragraph, over and over, that she is in pain, sad, alone, detached, etc.
There are very interesting, meaty parts of the story. She buys a fishing boat with a boyfriend and fishes through a storm, she walks through Europe to the Middle East with no money, she cares for her mother through a terrible terminal disease. But these moments are dragged down by the over emphasis of her feelings. Meredith also chooses to ignore chronology again and again, and also leaves huge holes in her story - just when we are rivited by her story, she jumps to a whole new part of her life. For instance, one chapter ends with her in the Middle East, broke, practically naked...then, she decides to go home. The next chapter starts and she has two children. How did she get home? How did she meet and fall in love with the father? What changes in this empty person's life to open up to another human and decide to create a new life? It is a mystery.
While there is some good stuff here, and Hall is a talented writer, I found this to be a tedious attempt. I needed more meat, less gravy.
Book Review: A Bit Confusing
Summary: 3 Stars
While I was captivated by Meredith Hall's courageous story, I found her writing style to be quite confusing. She did not tell the story from either the past or the present--but tended to mix the two. It would often take a paragraph or two within each new chapter to figure out where she was in time or space. In addition, I felt so many details that would be interesting to the reader were omitted. For example, how did she get from a beach in Syria back to the United States with little or no money? How did she meet her husband and where did she get married?
I could have never survived the mental or emotional abuse that Ms. Hall suffered, and she is an incredible inspiration. I just wish the story line would have been more linear.
Book Review: Possibly exaggerated
Summary: 3 Stars
I really enjoyed reading this book but have wondered if the author has exaggerated a bit for effect. I lived in a small New Hampshire town close to Hampton at the time the book begins. A girl or two in the town became pregnant and there was definite disapproval, but at the same time kindness. No one was shunned by her friends or anyone else, much less her parents. I find it hard to believe that her parents were so stonily unloving at this critical time of need for support and understanding, not to mention help. Maybe, but I doubt it. Her travels sound suspiciously overdone also. Still, it's an absorbing story and a gripping read.Book Review: It's Ok
Summary: 3 Stars
I thank the author for being so honest with her life's journey. It was compelling and heartfelt at times. However I did not like the mixing of periods of time and stories, she would switch from past to present to past again, one story line to another and then come back to the original story line. I just didn't feel it flowed very well. I've read other books where authors did this but they did it flawlessly and it flowed so well. If it was a work of fiction I would have stopped reading halfway through but since it was a Memoir I wanted to know how Meredith Hall made it through. Ms. Hall has an interesting life story.Book Review: A Broken Life
Summary: 3 Stars
The writer tells her sad tale fairly well although there are a few breaks in the narrative that leave the reader feeling the story is a bit disjointed in places. Toward the end of the book, this reader began to lose sympathy and wanted to urge the writer (even to shout at her!) to move forward with her life. The old saying 'on a deaf man's door you can knock forever' comes to mind.