Publisher's Weekly Review
It was 1965 when Hall was expelled from her New Hampshire high school, shunned by all her friends, made to leave her mother's home, and kept hidden from sight in her father's house-all because she was a sexually na?ve 16-year-old, pregnant by a college boy who wasn't all that interested in her anyway. And in this memoir, chapters of which have been published in magazines, Hall narrates this bittersweet tale of loss. After childbirth her baby was put up for adoption so fast, she never had even a glimpse of him. She finished high school at a nearby boarding school, then soon wandered to Europe and eventually found herself just walking, alone, from country to country. Somewhere in the Middle East she scraped bottom and repatriated herself. She accumulated another lover and had two children, before her first son, the one she was forced to abandon, made contact. Making peace with him was deeply healing. This painful memoir builds to a quiet resolution, as Hall comes to grips with her own aging, the complexities of forgiveness and the continuity of life. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An unusually powerful coming-of-age memoir. Hall spent her childhood in a remote corner of New Hampshire. She got pregnant during her 16th summer, after sex with a college student she barely knew. It was 1965, and traditional values reigned in small-town New England. Busybodies at the Halls' church somehow overlooked the fact that her parents were divorced, but they wouldn't ignore Meredith's indiscretion. The moment her pregnancy became public, she was kicked out of school. Her mother, deeply ashamed, sent her to live with her father in another town. Dad and stepmom grudgingly took her in, but forbade her to leave the house, or even to come downstairs when they had guests. Hall had a baby boy, gave him up for adoption and enrolled at a far-away boarding school. She slogged through senior year feeling hopelessly alienated from her mirthful classmates. Nonetheless, she dutifully went next to Bennington, only to drop out after a term. Then she began to drift. She moved to Boston, worked odd jobs, bounced from apartment to apartment. She allowed a fight with her stepmother to destroy her relationship with her father. Decades later, living in Maine, Hall began to pull her life together. She matriculated at Bowdoin College, the only "nontraditional student" the school had ever admitted; the short chapter detailing her dogged campaign to gain admission and her first day of classes is one of the most understatedly moving sections here. In 1987, her grown son tracked her down, enabling her to make peace with him and with herself. "I have caused harm, failed in the expectations and obligations of love," she concludes in characteristically assured prose. "I have loved well. What I do each day is carried within me until I die." Searching, humble and quietly triumphant: Hall has managed to avoid all the easy clichs. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In 1965, Hall, called Meredy, becomes pregnant at 16. Four-and-a-half months later, maternal instincts kick in. She pauses before doing a somersault in gym class, and her secret is exposed. Expelled from school, she is shunned by her small New Hampshire community and turned away by her mother. Sent to live with her father and his chilly new wife, she hides upstairs while they have dinner parties, waiting out her pregnancy like a prison term. This rousing memoir tells the story of how Meredy was forced to give her baby up for adoption (was, in fact, drugged during labor to prevent any contact at all) and pushed into a vagabond existence. She lives on a boat, wanders penniless around the Middle East, and eventually settles in Maine. Divorced and raising two young children, she gets a phone call: her son is found. Written in spare, unsentimental prose, Without a Map is stunning; Meredy's reunion with her grown son (who was raised in poverty with an abusive father) is the highlight. Book groups, take note. --Emily Cook Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The year: 1965. The place: a small, insular New Hampshire community where church and home life are dominant forces. When Hall becomes pregnant at 16, she is shunned by family members and friends she's known throughout her school years. After traveling to the Middle East and suffering the indignities of loneliness and poverty, which include selling her own blood, she returns to the United States and creates a new life out of her still-palpable grief. Finally, she is able to forgive her own parents, who never offer an apology. She then receives a visit from her 21-year-old son, whom she had been forced to put up for adoption and who was raised in an atmosphere of abuse and scarcity. Though Hall's memoir-her first book-occasionally loses ground to the very grief she is trying to overcome, the message of redemptive compassion makes this a worthwhile and moving read. Appropriate for all public libraries.-Elizabeth Brinkley, Granite Falls, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
