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    Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
    Unavailable
    Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
    Unavailable
    Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
    Audiobook6 hours

    Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the acclaimed, best-selling memoirist and novelist - “a writer of rare talent” (Cheryl Strayed) — a memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test: an exploration of the urgent ethical questions surrounding fertility treatments and DNA testing, and a profound inquiry of paternity, identity, and love.

    What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?

    In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history — the life she had lived — crumbled beneath her.

    Inheritance is an audiobook about secrets — secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than 50 years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is an audiobook about the extraordinary moment we live in — a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics, but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.

    Editor's Note

    Book club pick…

    This is the first pick from Gretchen Rubin’s new Happier Podcast Book Club. In the announcement post, Rubin writes that this book is “a thought-provoking, beautifully written memoir that's so suspenseful, I read it in practically one sitting.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 15, 2019
    ISBN9781984840233
    Unavailable
    Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

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    Reviews for Inheritance

    4.5/5

    133 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Beautiful writing! Very interesting story of family medical ethics and identity.
    • 5/5
      Incredible thought provoking story. The author has an wonderful ability to tell a story that is both honest and interesting.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed her style of writing and she was able to make me think
    • 4/5
      All of it. A very up to date subject in the times of 23&me and Ancestry. And is happening all over.
    • 2/5
      I liked the writing style, but the author's egotism and lack of empathy is bewildering. The book is a 55-chapter long complaint about the parents (all of them), the system and, well, life. That said I did finish it, but would never ever recommend it to anyone.
    • 5/5
      Riveting and honest...I couldn’t stop listening. Really made me think about the ethics of sperm donation.
    • 5/5
      I appreciate Dani sharing her story with us. The story was such a heartfelt, honest story.
    • 5/5
      So moving, so beautifully written, so intimate and real. She is a writer at the top of the form. Read her!!
    • 5/5
      This is a beautifully written story of searching for and making meaning of belonging, love and family. Beautifully read by the author. I’d never read Dani Shapiro’s work before but now I’d like to read it all.
    • 1/5
      I think the author is overly obsessed with the fact that her life began from artificial insemination. The father that raised her IS her father! He is the one that loved and nourished her. Watching pornographic content, ejaculating into a cup and picking up a payment for this does NOT distinguish anyone as a father. If the donor had been an unsavoury person, would she have been so keen to form a relationship with him? If she had not been a well-known author and he had been a distinguished and well thought of physician, would be have wanted to meet her? Our self worth is not dependent on others. It is up to us, as a person.
    • 3/5
      Lost my attention a few times. Interesting story, but the authors personal reflection on the situation seemed quite repetitive.