Autobiography without an inciting incident or outlandish background can be a tricky sell. Yet even as O’Neill struggles to justify her sudden obsession, she writes with convincing and passionate introspection ... The caper-forward passages are interspersed with bouts of self-reflection and stewing ... Meanwhile, a smattering of fundamental narrative questions go unanswered, which can lead to a corrosion of the page-turning process ... Still, Woman of Interest contains shining moments.
O’Neill elevates the subgenre, producing a memoir that is simultaneously an investigation, a noir with a femme fatale, and a darkly humorous tale of what happens when one meets the person who has everything and nothing to do with one’s life. Woman of Interest is searching, yes, but more attuned to language and paranoia than others of its genre ... Although O’Neill’s memoir is essentially concerned with her mother in Korea, the titular woman of interest, we also get a sense of the other mother in a gorgeously melancholic recounting of O’Neill’s upbringing by her adoptive family in New England ... Instead of the reparative gestures of a traditional adoptee memoir, Woman of Interest offers something darker, colder, more fraught, and ultimately, singular and transcendent.
Her memoir at times reads like a thriller and does so right at the beginning ... O’Neill captures in her writing the complexities of family and the pain caused by separation and by keeping secrets.
A genre-expanding noir memoir-detective story, full of drama, intrigue, bizarre characters, even more bizarre behavior, and unexpected twists. With spare, incisive language, and straight-faced humor, Dr. O’Neill takes the reader on a journey from Poughkeepsie, NY to Daejeon, South Korea to discover family secrets ... You must read it yourself to capture the fullness of the family intrigue and interactions. Readers whose lives resonate with the author’s search will recall their own reunions with a lost family member and the realization that a glimpse into that life is insufficient to capture the history, complexity, and multidimensionality of the person.
Told through a stream-of-conscious narrative style, her memoir includes obscure vocabulary choices and nonlinear tangents, which might confuse some readers. Others, however, will embrace her memoir, which resembles what experimental jazz would be like if it were a written narrative. Funny, shocking, and emotionally charged, the memoir takes readers on her journey of self-discovery and finding what family means.
Idiosyncratic ... The memoir often assumes the hard-boiled tone of a mystery novel. It transcends disappointing personal experiences to muse on origins and endings. O'Neill's sardonic wit and quirky turns of phrase lighten a bittersweet, inconclusive story.
Riveting ... In cool, noir-tinted prose shot through with wit and compassion, O’Neill presents her inquiry as a sort of metaphysical detective story. Readers will be enthralled.
