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217 reviews for:
Philomena (Movie Tie-In): A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search
Martin Sixsmith
3.49 AVERAGE
217 reviews for:
Philomena (Movie Tie-In): A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search
Martin Sixsmith
3.49 AVERAGE
I liked this - it was really interesting to learn about the gay community at the onset of the AIDS crisis and also the political redistricting, etc. The most interesting part to me was the impact of not knowing one's family or roots on children and how it follows them into adulthood. There is so much to be said about the disconnection that comes with adoption and fostering even in the best cases; although this made for a pretty cruel experiment it was neat to be able to see the results, in one case, anyway.
This title might seem familiar to most because it was recently made into a Oscar nominated film starring Dame Judi Dench. The film was a heartwarming yet heart wrenching take on the real life story of Philomena Lee. This film focuses on Philomena’s search for her lost son, aided by the sardonic reporter Martin Sixsmith.
This was a great, moving, and poignant movie, with excellent performances by both Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. It’s no wonder it was nominated for so many awards. After watching and loving the movie, I went in search for the book it was based on. Interested in this poor woman’s struggle, I wanted to know more. I found a copy of the movie tie-in edition, and purchased it, excited to delve deeper.
The first part of the book did not disappoint. It told the harrowing story of a girl in the care of corrupt institution in 1950s Ireland, forced to give up the child she loved. The film stayed quite true to this part of the story.
However, the similarities ended around there (and picked back up again in the last few pages of the book). Although I did rather enjoy the book, I’ve taken a star off my rating due to the egregious misrepresentation of the content in this book. In the movie tie-in edition, the reader is led to believe that the pages therein will contain the story of Philomena Lee. However, more than 95% of the book is about the life of her long lost son, Michael Hess (né Anthony Lee). Although his story was indeed interesting and moving, it was not what I was led to expect.
Curious about this inconsistency, I looked up the original edition of the book. This brought about an “aha” moment. The original title is not Philomena but the more apt The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. Clearly in the movie tie-in version, they were looking to draw in the audience, like me, who enjoyed the film. However, the book itself goes significantly more into depth about the life of her son. Therefore, it is not so much the story of Philomena as it is the fruits of her search. It’s the touching story of Michael’s search for identity, as he struggles to come to terms with his adoption and his sexuality.
I take another star off my rating due to the ambiguity surrounding much of this work of “non-fiction.” It purports to be a true story (and largely it is) but there is a lot of creative liberty taken. Sixsmith clearly uses his imagination when filling in some of the blanks. I would dub this as more a of work of creative non-fiction. Not only so, but, allegedly, one of Sixsmith’s sources complains about the book on Goodreads. This may leave one scratching one’s head.
That being said, I did quite enjoy this story once I got over my confusion. If you enjoy narrative non-fiction and don’t find any of these afore mentioned qualms too troubling, I would recommend you give this book a shot. However, if you don’t think this book is for you, you should definitely at least see the movie. The movie is truly very good (I have watched it more than once!).
Just for fun, here is the original synopsis for the book (it’s quite a bit more accurate than that of tie-in edition!):
“When she fell pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to the convent of Roscrea, Co. Limerick, to be looked after as a ‘fallen woman’ and at the age of three her baby was whisked away and ‘sold’ to America for adoption. Coerced into signing a document promising ‘Never to Seek to Know’ what the Church did with him, she never saw him again. She would spend the next fifty years searching for her son, unaware that he spent his life searching for her.
Philomena’s son, renamed Michael Hess, grew up to be a top lawyer and then a Republican politician in the first Bush administration. But he was also gay and in 1980s Washington being out and proud was not an option. He not only had to conceal not only his sexuality, but, eventually, the fact that he had AIDs. With little time left, he returned to Ireland and the convent in which he was born to plead with the nuns to tell him who his mother was, so that he might see her before he died. They refused.
The Lost Child of Philomena Lee is the story of a mother and a son, whose lives were blighted by the forces of hypocrisy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the secrets they were forced to keep. A compelling narrative of human love and loss, Martin Sixsmith’s moving account is both heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive.”
This was a great, moving, and poignant movie, with excellent performances by both Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. It’s no wonder it was nominated for so many awards. After watching and loving the movie, I went in search for the book it was based on. Interested in this poor woman’s struggle, I wanted to know more. I found a copy of the movie tie-in edition, and purchased it, excited to delve deeper.
The first part of the book did not disappoint. It told the harrowing story of a girl in the care of corrupt institution in 1950s Ireland, forced to give up the child she loved. The film stayed quite true to this part of the story.
However, the similarities ended around there (and picked back up again in the last few pages of the book). Although I did rather enjoy the book, I’ve taken a star off my rating due to the egregious misrepresentation of the content in this book. In the movie tie-in edition, the reader is led to believe that the pages therein will contain the story of Philomena Lee. However, more than 95% of the book is about the life of her long lost son, Michael Hess (né Anthony Lee). Although his story was indeed interesting and moving, it was not what I was led to expect.
Curious about this inconsistency, I looked up the original edition of the book. This brought about an “aha” moment. The original title is not Philomena but the more apt The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. Clearly in the movie tie-in version, they were looking to draw in the audience, like me, who enjoyed the film. However, the book itself goes significantly more into depth about the life of her son. Therefore, it is not so much the story of Philomena as it is the fruits of her search. It’s the touching story of Michael’s search for identity, as he struggles to come to terms with his adoption and his sexuality.
I take another star off my rating due to the ambiguity surrounding much of this work of “non-fiction.” It purports to be a true story (and largely it is) but there is a lot of creative liberty taken. Sixsmith clearly uses his imagination when filling in some of the blanks. I would dub this as more a of work of creative non-fiction. Not only so, but, allegedly, one of Sixsmith’s sources complains about the book on Goodreads. This may leave one scratching one’s head.
That being said, I did quite enjoy this story once I got over my confusion. If you enjoy narrative non-fiction and don’t find any of these afore mentioned qualms too troubling, I would recommend you give this book a shot. However, if you don’t think this book is for you, you should definitely at least see the movie. The movie is truly very good (I have watched it more than once!).
Just for fun, here is the original synopsis for the book (it’s quite a bit more accurate than that of tie-in edition!):
“When she fell pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to the convent of Roscrea, Co. Limerick, to be looked after as a ‘fallen woman’ and at the age of three her baby was whisked away and ‘sold’ to America for adoption. Coerced into signing a document promising ‘Never to Seek to Know’ what the Church did with him, she never saw him again. She would spend the next fifty years searching for her son, unaware that he spent his life searching for her.
Philomena’s son, renamed Michael Hess, grew up to be a top lawyer and then a Republican politician in the first Bush administration. But he was also gay and in 1980s Washington being out and proud was not an option. He not only had to conceal not only his sexuality, but, eventually, the fact that he had AIDs. With little time left, he returned to Ireland and the convent in which he was born to plead with the nuns to tell him who his mother was, so that he might see her before he died. They refused.
The Lost Child of Philomena Lee is the story of a mother and a son, whose lives were blighted by the forces of hypocrisy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the secrets they were forced to keep. A compelling narrative of human love and loss, Martin Sixsmith’s moving account is both heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive.”
I thought this would be a book about Philomena Lee--sort of like the trailer to the movie that bears her name. But it wasn't. The vast majority of the book was the story of just how lost her son, Michael Hess, really was as he went from Irish orphan to chief counsel for the Republican National Committee during the Reagan and Bush years. And, oh yeah, he was gay. So, "Lost Child" is not just referencing the fact that his mother lost him, which is the tragic, compelling part of the story. It is also referencing the fact that he was ethically and morally bankrupt as he was mired down as the top lawyer for a bunch of Neonazi Republican assholes who have since ruined the country. So, you know, I am not really all that sympathetic toward Michael Hess, because he was a total and complete bastard hypocrite who held enough power to actually work for killing gay men by the tens of thousands during the AIDS crisis, and he fucking USED it. All the redistricting BULLSHIT that has gone on in this country since the Reagan years? Yeah. His fault.
I feel bad that he was forcibly removed from his mother when he was a tiny little boy. That was awful and heart-wrenching. But he had a huge hand in creating the government that decided not to respond to the AIDS he wound up dying from. In a way, he died by his own hand. It is absolutely CRIMINAL that he decided to take so many others with him. A lot of truly wonderful people died of AIDS. Michael Hess was NOT one of them. He signed a bargain with the Devil, and he knew it.
I feel bad that he was forcibly removed from his mother when he was a tiny little boy. That was awful and heart-wrenching. But he had a huge hand in creating the government that decided not to respond to the AIDS he wound up dying from. In a way, he died by his own hand. It is absolutely CRIMINAL that he decided to take so many others with him. A lot of truly wonderful people died of AIDS. Michael Hess was NOT one of them. He signed a bargain with the Devil, and he knew it.
"There is scientific data showing that the offspring of fallen women are fated to become rebels and to suffer from complexes analogous to those of certain invalids."
A nonfiction exposé on how Irish forced adoptions facilitated by the Catholic Church in the 1950s impacted 1 woman and her son.
This book should not have been called Philomena. It should have been titled Michael Anthony Hess. Only the very beginning and very end mention Philomena Lee, an unmarried Irish woman who was sent to a Catholic "mother and baby" home for 3 years to work in endentured servitude until her son was adopted (sold) to an American family.
Don't get me wrong, Hess's story is fascinating in its own right. Externally, he was a prominent lawyer for the Reagan and Bush I administrations who played a significant role in litigating the redistricting and gerrymandering laws still plaguing the U.S. today.
Internally, he was a conflicted Catholic gay man who lived professionally closeted, despised the morally superior image the Republican party built its image on, was infuriated by the lack of response they deployed in the face of the AIDS crisis, processed his incongruous feelings by engaging in high-risk sexual behavior, and eventually contracted and died of AIDS in the '90s.
Philomena and Michael tried for years to locate each other and never met. It's a tragic story that was startlingly common in the middle of last century.
My frustration is I learned nothing about what happened to Philomena after Michael was sold until the last few pages. She started searching for her son 10 months after he was sent away and was continually condemned by the nuns, who refused to give her information on his whereabouts.
Additionally, this should have been billed as creative nonfiction considering Sixsmith became involved in the 2000s after Philomena's daughter contacted him and he never met Hess. Yet the majority of the book features the inner thoughts and feelings of a man who was long dead.
Although a compelling story, I read this as research on post-war forced adoption for the novel I'm writing and instead learned far more about the soul-selling hypocrisy required to succeed as a gay republican in the '80s.
A nonfiction exposé on how Irish forced adoptions facilitated by the Catholic Church in the 1950s impacted 1 woman and her son.
This book should not have been called Philomena. It should have been titled Michael Anthony Hess. Only the very beginning and very end mention Philomena Lee, an unmarried Irish woman who was sent to a Catholic "mother and baby" home for 3 years to work in endentured servitude until her son was adopted (sold) to an American family.
Don't get me wrong, Hess's story is fascinating in its own right. Externally, he was a prominent lawyer for the Reagan and Bush I administrations who played a significant role in litigating the redistricting and gerrymandering laws still plaguing the U.S. today.
Internally, he was a conflicted Catholic gay man who lived professionally closeted, despised the morally superior image the Republican party built its image on, was infuriated by the lack of response they deployed in the face of the AIDS crisis, processed his incongruous feelings by engaging in high-risk sexual behavior, and eventually contracted and died of AIDS in the '90s.
Philomena and Michael tried for years to locate each other and never met. It's a tragic story that was startlingly common in the middle of last century.
My frustration is I learned nothing about what happened to Philomena after Michael was sold until the last few pages. She started searching for her son 10 months after he was sent away and was continually condemned by the nuns, who refused to give her information on his whereabouts.
Additionally, this should have been billed as creative nonfiction considering Sixsmith became involved in the 2000s after Philomena's daughter contacted him and he never met Hess. Yet the majority of the book features the inner thoughts and feelings of a man who was long dead.
Although a compelling story, I read this as research on post-war forced adoption for the novel I'm writing and instead learned far more about the soul-selling hypocrisy required to succeed as a gay republican in the '80s.
This book was heartbreaking and maddening. A mother's search for her son and her son's search for his mother. Missing each other in so many ways. The book is about their independent searches and the people that stood in their way. The cruelty of people to each other amazes me. This story spans 50 years of lies, casual indifference and willful misrepresentation of the true intentions of a religious home for unwed mothers. And underneath this is the strength of a mother and the hope of a child that shows that the human spirit cannot be easily defeated.
I was disappointed with this book. The story was interesting and well written, but the title was extremely misleading. I expected this to be the story of Philomena's search for her son---sure, I expected to learn what happened to Michael/Anthony, but I was not expecting a Michael Hess biography. It would have been much more interesting to have read about mother and son's lives in parallel.
A sad story of a boy adopted from an Irish convent, his life in the U.S., Republicans, and the AIDS epidemic. Not well-organized, well-written, or honest. I expect that the movie will be much better - which is unusual, in my experience.
Added in March 2014:
Yes, the movie is excellent, and the book is not good at all - and not even truthful, according to Susan Kavanagh, who was interviewed for it. Her comments can be read in her review of March 2, 2014.
Added in March 2014:
Yes, the movie is excellent, and the book is not good at all - and not even truthful, according to Susan Kavanagh, who was interviewed for it. Her comments can be read in her review of March 2, 2014.
Fantastic book, that is not told from the perspective of Philomena, such as the film, but gives us the story of Anthony/Michael.
I could not put this down and I find the fact that the powers that be could not give a dying man comfort in his final days disgusting. I hope their punishment in the after life was what they deserved. Honestly, do they forget that pride is a sin.
If you have seen the film, read this book, it will fill in gaps. Then again read the book anyway, you should love it.
I could not put this down and I find the fact that the powers that be could not give a dying man comfort in his final days disgusting. I hope their punishment in the after life was what they deserved. Honestly, do they forget that pride is a sin.
If you have seen the film, read this book, it will fill in gaps. Then again read the book anyway, you should love it.
I thought the book was fantasically written. I understand that some parts may be fiction and was a little taken aback that it was a biography about Philomena but written in Michaels point of view mostly. I think we have to remember that this is an English/Irish author who may be writing the story with their rules of grammar (I.e., some spelling and grammar differences). Overall, I thought it was gripping and interesting. I couldn't put it down and feel for Michael, Mary, Philomena and the other children and mothers affected by the awful baby trade of Ireland.