In contrast to so many memoirs that can feel voyeuristic, Kelle Groom's is intimate in a generous, revelatory way. Perhaps the fact that Groom's book began as a personal journal and is told via first-person narration helps; the feeling is that the reader is enlightened as Groom slowly releases her burdens.
When, in the first few pages, Groom gives her baby up to be raised by her aunt and uncle, her grief resonates viscerally: the reader is fully on her side and feels the loss as an injustice. This initial bond with Groom is crucial because the author quickly embarks on a dark, harrowing journey through addiction and unraveling. When Groom goes on a quest to find her son again, the result is not at all expected or typical of most memoirs about adoptive parents and children. Baby Tommy, diagnosed with leukemia at nine months, died at 18 months--and no one told his mother.
What saves Groom's tale from becoming unbearably painful is the prose. A published poet, Groom states that she is "interested in a narrative that is lyrical, imagistic, sensory." While this style is difficult to define, it allows the reader to experience Groom's life as a vortex of images from the other side of a pane of glass--as Groom herself seemed to experience her own life via alcohol:
"Drinking is easier than I'd imagined, less dramatic. I feel myself cohere around a radioactive center, my arms reaching out like bright flowers. Where I end blurs."
While the focus of I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl is on regaining the son she lost, the ultimate gain for the reader is in witnessing Groom reclaim her own life. --Kristen Galles, blogger at Book Club Classics