A review by burdin87
The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith

3.0

Unlike the movie in that the book primarily focuses on the life of the son, mostly through re-imaginings of various parts of his life. Interesting in that it addresses some issues that the movie almost entirely glossed over-- what *was* life like as a semi-closeted gay man working for the Republican party during the height of the AIDS epidemic?-- but I didn't quite care for the invented dialogue. I also ended up getting distracted by questioning the source material for each section. By process of elimination based on who was still alive when Sixsmith was researching the book, for example, the bulk of the childhood material must have come from his sister, Mary; college years from his (ex)lover Mark, etc., which leads to inevitable questions about how much those people's biases colored our view of Mike/Anthony during those years.