In her fascinating new memoir, Inheritance, Shapiro ... begins a remarkable, dogged, emotional journey as [she] digs into the past to find the truth. Inheritance reads like a mystery, unfolding minute by minute and day by day. The reader experiences the grief, surprises and setbacks right along with the author ... She juggles all of these threads and—it must be said—all of this overwhelming emotion quite deftly, while spinning the story out smoothly ... Shapiro’s book is a wise and thorough examination of how this news affected her. She is a good guide for the bombshells that are yet to explode for so many families.
The better the writer, the more unassailable the identity. This makes the identity crisis of Inheritance all the more precarious—and Shapiro’s presentation of it all the more remarkable ... [Shapiro] has an intimate, ruminating style, leaping associatively through time, addressing the reader not as an audience, or voyeur, but more as an interlocutor, thoughtfully answering the questions she thinks someone might ask, if they lived in her head ... a disorderly book. There is panic, neurosis, disorientation ... It’s gory, not contemplative. And it’s wonderfully apt ... Shapiro’s account of her experience with an unexpected result from genetic testing is superficially so much more storylike than her previous stories ... With everything suddenly on the table—to contemplate—and no way to resolve it, Shapiro finds the subject that allows her to write from the center, raw, as the story unfolds, in the wreckage of immediacy.
Inheritance is consumed by the question of what if? What if the man Shapiro thought was her father is not? What if she could find the man who is her biological father? What if he doesn’t want anything to do with her? What if he does? What if she is not who she thought she was? ... Inheritance is fundamentally a tale of soul-searching. Much of the book consists of Shapiro processing and pondering each new bit of information ... Inheritance offers a thought-provoking look at the shifting landscape of identity. It will make you think twice before you casually spit into that vial.
At any rate, the true drama of Inheritance is not Shapiro’s discovery of her father’s identity but the meaning she makes of it ... Shapiro’s account is beautifully written and deeply moving — it brought me to tears more than once. I couldn’t help feeling unnerved, though, by the strength of her conviction that blood will out, which leads her uncomfortably close to genetic determinism.
With lightning speed and relentless determination, Shapiro tracks down the sperm donor who was her biological father and navigates an emotional and ethical minefield to create a relationship. The notion of identity, once so defined, suddenly becomes amorphous and untrustworthy. Shapiro’s anguish over a flawed past is palpable; her anxiety regarding an indeterminate future is paralyzing. Page after page, Shapiro displays a disarming honesty and an acute desire to know the unknowable.
Inheritance reads like a detective story, albeit an emotional one. It's full of twists and turns ... Shapiro is skilled at spinning her personal explorations into narrative gold ... [Shapiro's] prose is clear and often lovely, and her searching questions are unfailingly intelligent. She is not afraid to show herself in an unflattering light, which helps secure our trust ... To her credit, Shapiro doesn't settle for easy answers. She tenaciously pursues her quest to determine what each of her parents knew about her provenance ... These broader investigations save Inheritance from too much self-absorbed navel-gazing. Still, her chest-beating about who she is and how she could have missed the signs occasionally seems overwrought and melodramatic.
Shapiro is hardly the first to encounter the hidden time bomb that DNA testing can ignite, but that’s a larger story. Instead of taking up the wide-reaching subject whole cloth, Inheritance zooms in on the blind spots that result when reproductive technology outpaces an understanding of its consequences. In viewing this important and timely topic through a highly personal lens, Inheritance succeeds admirably.
... compelling ... Shapiro writes vividly about her immediate sense of shock and dislocation, and she also recounts the head-spinning speed with which she tracks down her biological father ... Shapiro moves skillfully among the separate strands of her story...
Shapiro [is] a seasoned writer who understands self-reflection and knows how to go deep inside herself ... Inheritance is a fascinating read that will carry you along as it explores the nature of what makes us who we are ... This memoir is part detective story, part personal essay and was born out of the serendipity of spitting into a test tube.
... a searing, fast-paced narrative that reads like a mystery ... Shapiro’s transparency and rawness are palpable, this woman can write her heart out. Her prose is sharp, quick and poetic, inviting readers into her world with a gentle invitation. She leads us through backwoods and dark alleys, and always to the light. This is a story about secrets, uncovering them and what we do with them, truth-telling and respecting the stories of others as we let it out, and an unquestionable love; the love we choose and allow to change us too.
What follows is an incredible work of investigation and self-reflection ... As Shapiro grapples with what to do, what she is owed and what she owes others, we can hear the echoes of [Ben] Walden doing the same through their email exchanges. As their relationship develops, it proves a thrilling and emotional ride ... Written with generosity and honesty, Inheritance takes the modern phenomenon of casual DNA testing and builds a deeply personal narrative around it. The result is a vital, necessary read from a talented author.
... Dani Shapiro can tell this story like no one else could ... [Shapiro is] an excellent writer, and though the book is at times a little melodramatic, it's smart, psychologically astute and not afraid to tell it like it is ... [Shapiro] knew she had a great story on her hands. And she was right.
... a swift moving narrative of profound personal disorientation ... The real emotional ballast of Inheritance, though, is the journey Shapiro takes within her own family ... a memoir that feels necessary for those who 'might have always been haunted by a feeling of otherness,' and engrossing for those who have not.
The book’s brief chapters alternate between the compelling story of Shapiro’s discovery – and her cautiously unfolding relationship with her biological father – and a moving reconsideration of a childhood ... Shapiro constructs an elegant metaphor likening her biological father to her native country.
It is after she discovers who her real father is, or at least the sperm donor, that the narrative deepens and enriches our deeper understanding of paternity, genetics, and what were then called 'test tube tots' ... For all the trauma that the discovery put her through, Shapiro recognizes that what she had experienced was 'a great story'—one that has inspired her best book.
Fascinating ... With thoughtful candor, [Shapiro] explores the ethical questions surrounding sperm donation, the consequences of DNA testing, and the emotional impact of having an uprooted religious and ethnic identity. This beautifully written, thought-provoking genealogical mystery will captivate readers from the very first pages.
