Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses

"Like Family," by Paula McLain

Paula McLain's memoir of growing up in foster care

Publisher: Little Brown & Company; 1st edition (March 2003)
ISBN: 0316597422
Hardcover, 240 pages

"Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses - A Memoir"

This wonderfully written memoir follows the author and her two sisters as they move from home to home in the foster care system during the 1970s and 80s, through borrowed homes with borrowed possessions... and even borrowed parents.

Author Paula McLain holds a Masters of Fine Arts in poetry, and perhaps that's why her words have a cadence, a rhythm that draws the reader through "Like Family: Growing Up In Other People's Houses," but in this book, McLain is much more than a poet: she's a storyteller of the highest order. She doesn't gloss over the fears, insecurities, and abuse she and her sisters dealt with, but neither does she leave out the wonder of the sisters' growing up - their sense of adventure, little-girl conspiracies, and their survival tactics when things are almost beyond their ability to comprehend - and it all makes for one of the best books this reviewer has read in a long time.

Bringing powerful imagery to her story, McLain manages to capture a child's interpretation of adult events that can evoke a range of emotions from laughter to tears. And through it all, the two poignant themes of yearning to belong and solidarity among the sisters never falter.

McLain's story isn't a social commentary, but it certainly raises many questions about foster care and who acts to protect children in abusive situations. In "Like Family," the solution is either to move the sisters to another foster home or do nothing at all, leaving them to figure it out on their own and come to their own childish conclusions, evoking anger and deep sadness in both the narrator and the reader.

It's a brave story, the opening of the author's most private places to public scrutiny, and it's told in a largely unemotional narrative which only serves to magnify the pain of cruel comments, and the heartbreak of children learning hard lessons long before they are emotionally equipped to understand or handle them.

It may be true that every family has a story to tell, but few have been as vividly recounted and are as important to read as "Like Family."

(Read an excerpt.)

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