THE CEPHALOPOD COFFEEHOUSE: PHILOMENA

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

It's time for this month's Cephalopod Coffeehouse.

The idea is simple: on the last Friday of each month, post about the best book you've finished over the past month while visiting other bloggers doing the same.  In this way, we'll all have the opportunity to share our thoughts with other enthusiastic readers.

To join us or to visit other participants, please click on The Armchair Squid, the blogger who is the host with the most. Here we go:

I love the movie Philomena, which I reviewed HERE. I think Dame Judi Dench should have won the Academy Award for Best Actress. 

When I watched the movie, I hadn't yet read the book on which it is based. I'm glad I did. The book is very different from the movie.

Philomena the movie focuses on Philomena's relationship with journalist Martin Sixsmith, who discovers what happened to Philomena's son, born in 1952, who was taken from her and given up for adoption by nuns in Ireland who kept unmarried pregnant girls as their slaves.

Philomena the book, by the aforementioned Martin Sixsmith, includes information about Philomena and the loss of her child, but it zones in on what happened to her son, Anthony, who was adopted by Americans (or should I say purchased?), and had his name changed to Michael Hess. The Hess's took Anthony/Michael because they were adopting a little girl named Mary, who was Michael's best friend. Their prospective mother could see that Michael comforted Mary and made her happy.

Michael and Mary when they were adopted.

Michael doesn't seem to have had a very happy childhood with the Hess family. His new brothers teased and belittled him. His adoptive parents were such dolts that they couldn't figure out why Mary spoke only in "gibberish," which Michael translated. It took a visit by an Irish priest to explain that the children spoke Gaelic. 

This book is my favorite for the month of October because I learned so much about Michael and Mary Hess and their lives in the U.S. I am troubled, however, by Sixsmith's recreations of conversations and his descriptions of Michael's feelings. Yes, he has sources, but the book has no notes nor citations. 

I learned undisputably that Michael Hess grew up to be very intelligent. He became a lawyer for The Republican National Committee. He was gay, and he died from AIDS.

Michael Hess as a lawyer for The Republican National Committee.
Note his high forehead.
It's the result of forceps used to pull him from his mother's body.
He was a breech birth, delivered by a nun.
No doctor was in attendance, and Philomena was given no pain reliever then,
nor when her child was sold.

Knowing the few facts I've included in the above caption should be enough to make one curious about this book. And that's why I like it. It satisfies my curiosity about the story behind the movie:

The morning shift in the laundry lasted until a short lunch break, when the mothers were allowed to see their children. Another shift followed and evenings were spent in cleaning and chores around the building. The hour after dinner was set aside for knitting and sewing. The girls had to make the clothes their children wore, and many became accomplished seamstresses. There were no radios or books, but the girls were allowed to sit in the nursery with their babies or in the day room with those who were already toddlers. It was this hour––the time they looked forward to most--which brought the girls close to their children and established the bond that would haunt mother and child for the rest of their lives. To allow such love to blossom seemed crueller even than taking the babies away at birth.

This passage demonstrates Martin Sixsmith's sympathy for his subject. He also helps to expose a practice in Ireland that had gone on far too long and didn't end very many years ago; that is, sending unmarried, pregnant girls to convents and then selling their babies to Americans who wanted to adopt them, followed by the nuns' refusal to tell mothers where their children were, and their refusal to tell the adopted adults who returned whence they came. Michael Hess visited the nuns more than once, and was never told that his mother was looking for him.

Philomena, in spite of its flaws, earns The Janie Junebug Seal of Highest Approval.

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

Martin Sixsmith and Philomena Lee at the premier of the movie,
Philomena.