#12 The Lost Child- A Mother's Story

365 Blog Challenge: Post #12

I recently finished reading The Lost Child- A Mother's Story, a memoir by Julie Myerson. Myerson is an excellent writer. She's written multiple novels and a couple other non-fiction books. However, I wish I'd read one of those instead of this one. The Lost Child is an interwoven story of a child artist, Mary Yelloly, from the 1800s and the authors son, "our boy" as he is referred to in the book. Mary dies of tuberculosis in 1839, just as her life was getting started. The boy, the eldest of Myerson's three children, has just discovered a life of drugs in which he has begun to spiral downward. He wreaks havoc at home, he is moody, uncooperative, and unreasonable. He is destroying the family he grew up with, and eventually, the author and her husband are forced to kick him out.

What bothered me about this book is that I just couldn't find a reason to care about Mary. The author doesn't describe what prompted her interest in her (I had to read in a review that they are from the same area of England), nor why I should give a hoot about Mary in the first. The Mary sections of the book give more information about Myerson's search for the girl than the girl herself. I learned more about the Yelloly family than about Mary's life. The book could have sufficiently revolved around Myerson's trouble at home. Mary's story takes away from the catharsis of the book. I found myself disappointed when another section about the girl was presented.

Despite my dislike for the Mary sections, there is actually one beautiful last scene in the book about Mary, in which Myerson fantasizes about meeting her. This scene, and the memoiresque portions of the book are truly where we see Myerson's gift as a writer. Maybe the lack of information about Mary is supposed to parallel the lack of information Myerson's son is sharing with his family. Maybe searching for the truth about Mary is supposed to match the search for truth in her own family life or the search for her son's motives and the depth of his problems.

Whatever Mrs. Myerson's motives, I agree with her son's perception when she presents him with the manuscript to this story. He actually is fairly gracious in allowing her to divulge information about his life and his mishaps. However, he reports he didn't much care for the parts about Mary. "To be absolutely honest...I wasn't all that interested in the stuff about the Mary Yelloly person....but maybe you have to be pushing fifty and female."

Agreed. The Lost Child was lost on me.