From Publishers WeeklyIt 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 houseall because she was a sexually nave 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.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.From BooklistIn 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 CookCopyright American Library Association. All rights reserved Hall emerges as a brave writer of tumultuous beauty.Alanna Nash, Entertainment Weekly"First-time author Hall pens a haunting meditation on love, loss, and family . . . Hall colors outside the lines with this memoir, full of unexpected twists and turns."Caroline Leavitt, People (rated 4 out of 4 stars)"Hall's memoir is a sobering portrayal of how punitive her close-knit New Hampshire community was in 1965 when, at the age of 16, she became pregnant in the course of a casual summer romance . . . Hall offers a testament to the importance of understanding and even forgiving the people who, however unconscious or unkind, have made us who we are."Francine Prose, O Magazine"Meredith Hall's long journey from an inexcusably betrayed girlhood to the bittersweet mercies of womanhood is a triple triumphof survival; of narration; and of forgiveness. Without a Map is a masterpiece."David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and God Laughs and Plays"Each chapter of Without a Map is polished and elegantly written . . . the structure is shapely and the book yields poignant insights."Juliet Wittman, Washington Post"Beautifully rendered."Elle, nonfiction readers' pick"In 1965, in a small New Hampshire town, sixteen-year-old Meredith Hall got pregnant and was consequently kicked out of her school, home, church, and community. Hall's mother sent her to another town to live with her father and stepmother, who confined her to the house. Days after giving birth (her baby was put up for adoption), she interviewed at a boarding school where she was forbidden to mention anything about her past. Hall's memoir, Without a Map, is a devastating story of what happens when a person is exiled from her own life."Frances Lefkowitz, Body + Soul"A poignant, unflinchingly assured memoir . . . exquisite." Robert Braile, Boston Globe"Meredith Hall's magnificent book held me in its thrall from the moment I began reading the opening pages . . . a fluid, beautifully written, hard-won piece of work that belongs on the shelf next to the best modern memoirs."Dani Shapiro, author of Black and White"An unusually elegant memoir that feels as though it's been carved straight out of Meredith Hall's capacious heart. The story is riveting, the words perfect."Lauren Slater, author of Welcome to My Country and Opening Skinner's Box"Without a Map is stunning . . . Book groups, take note."Booklist what do you talk about in a book club Without a Map: A Memoir
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Flashback in Perspective---A Pregnant teen shunned by her family, friends, and systemBy FyrecurlThis book is a must read for anyone who ever doubted that social injustice can happen to them, and for writers who wish to present multiple flashbacks out of sequence.One of the more difficult crafts a writer must master is an ability to provide backstory through a flashback without losing the reader on the page, stuck in the present, and without a map. In Without a Map, Meredith Hall uses the technique easily and makes it a part of the natural flow of her story. Halls account of her abandonment by both her parents when she became pregnant at sixteen in 1965, and her lifetime struggle to deal with the aftermath including, coping with the abandonment of her baby, raising her own family, and to finally make peace with her mother, father, and herself, provided the perfect, tense situation for the use of flashbacks to tell her story.Generally, writers use verb tense to show a shift in time. They write in the past tense, dream sequences in the present tense, and create flashbacks using past perfect tense. Some writers, use past perfect only in the first few sentences, to let the reader know where they are going, before switching back to past tense to finish the scene in order to keep continuity, and make the story flow. Lastly, writers ease the reader back to the main part of their story, as they had leading into the flashback, by using past perfect before moving back into simple past tense. Hall appears to have mixed it up, perhaps even experimented, until she got the tone of her story right. It has the feel of someone meditating, dwelling on, or thinking about her past in an almost irreverent mannera revolutionary. Although she begins similar to other writers, but instead of past tense, she uses present tense to set up her story, and she takes it one step further, she removes the mystery, and some of the suspense where she begins: Even now, I talk too much and too loud, claiming ground, afraid I will disappear from this life, too, this time of being mother, and teacher and friend (Hall, xi), [t]hat iteverything I care about, that I believe in, that defines and reassures mewill be wrenched from me again. (Hall, xi). By presenting to the reader right from the beginning that she is telling a story that has already happened, stating: [e]ven now implying she had been referring earlier to something that had happened in the past, she allows herself the luxury of using present tense to move her story. Additionally, she now has the advantage of two perspectives to build credibility with the reader, her former younger character, who had lived through the ordeal, and her more mature character who is able to make poignant commentary reflecting on her characters development. Positing the story in this manner presents what essentially is a flashback story, filling in the blanks of the question posited in the opening paragraph, what makes this person so afraid that her life would change again, and lose everything shed ever cared about.Halls use of a prologue, and a lead-in transition that establishes two perspectives piques the readers interest in the protagonist inciting her to keep reading. Thus, when she starts out with the most crucial scene in her memoir that changed her life, the climax of her external story, where she gets pregnant, the reader is drawn in to see what happened afterward to the younger character. Hall grounds the reader in the present of her story, with just enough detail background information to set the time, and place. In her first paragraph the reader learns that it is warm day and damp near the ocean at Hampton Beach and that she is sixteen in 1965. (Hall, 1). She then establishes the tense of her main story as present tense, Hrrr, a young man says, (emphasis added). When she wants to regress into the past to provide further back story, to show why her young character acts the way she does when she encounters a flirtatious boy on the beach for the first time, she uses present perfect in conformity with her use of present tense. She writes: Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, is a hony-tonk place in 1965. Maybe it has always been. (Hall, 3). The exposition is made more productive where it comes after a particularly strong scene of her first encounter with a boy, where she is aware of his sexuality, at a time when the gender rules between the sexes were strictly enforced, 1965. Her use of a flashback scene here, where she seamlessly slips back into present tense after using present perfect to set it up, presents the comparison Hall had hoped to use for the reader to make sense of a naieve sixteen year-old girl, quite different than someone of the same gender, and age today. Wed park in the sandy lot behind the casinopresent perfectand [w]e ate (she slipped into present tense) hamburgers at Wimpys watching all the other tourists wander by They were French Canadians part of why my mother refused to let us go down to the beach that there was (past tense) something cheap and ordinary going on there boys and girls with different rules than mine. (Hall, 3). To ease the reader out of the flashback summary paragraph, she uses a transition phrase, and slips into past tenseThe beach was a playground of the old world. (Hall, 4). Because Hall had established from the inception that her story was a reminiscence of some past events that changed her life, she is able to slip in and out of flashbacks without upsetting the reader, and begins again in the very next paragraph (starting in present tense): But this summer, 1965, is a threshold time grounding the reader again in time, and then through the guise of present perfect finds another flashback scene to show the reader why the protagonist behaves the way she does, My mother comes to Hampton Beach, too, with Peter [her] boss, Peter has asked her to work with him for the summer. (Hall,4). Because the story is told in present tense, the author is able to slip into simple past tense, after the initial sentences using present perfect, in order to provide more in depth backstory in the flashback to keep the reader moving with as little delay as possible, Before she met Peter, she was president of the PTA and chair of the church social events committee. She polished our silver-plated forks and knives and carefully hemmed my skirts below the knee. (Hall, 4). [emphasis added]. As earlier, Hall again uses a familiar formula to ease the reader in and out of the flashback and into the present sense of her story through a few more lines of present perfect, followed by present tense. I am five months pregnant. I have numbed myself for this meeting now I feel embarrassed, a pregnant sixteen year-old in a childs clothes Anthony growls. (Hall,12).Hall brilliantly moves back and forth using the same flashback formulapresent tense, present perfect, past tense, and back to present tensethroughout the memoir in order to fill in details for the reader, provide background, and explain through exposition, why the character developed the way she did. Here, the narrative structure providing for two perspectives, one young and the other older Meredy, provide the message all of the flashbacks were meant to show:I have often wished that my children could remember all thetender, floating hours of being nursed, of being held into my heart,stroked and safe. I believe now that they do remember, that theirbodies know love and safety. I also carry my mothers love,my fathers whatever else may have gone wrong, whatever of griefand loss is carried by each of us, so too is love. Nothing is lost.(Hall, 211).All of the flashbacks used by Hall were necessary, and make her characters actions, and changes plausible. The reader is assured, after the mature characters insights are shared, that the past events, combined with the backstory of growing up a teen-age girl in the 1960s, that she was compelled to behave to act in the manner she did. It makes the story more powerful where, when the reader realizes how a beloved daughter fell from grace, was abandoned by her once loving parents, where she abandoned her own child, where she struggled to understand, and eventually changed herself, and reconciled with her parents, and family, it was a great feat.____________________ Hall, Meredith. Without a Map. Beacon Press. Boston. 2007.27 of 27 people found the following review helpful. Without a doubt...By C. Ray...this is a book that anyone who has wondered, "How could someone give up their baby?" should read. And if you have ever asked, "What kind of person gives up their baby?" this is a must read, because the answer is... someone just like any of us.Things happen beyond our control - sometimes they just get out of hand and sometimes they are just unfamiliar and unexpected. Through everything that Meredith Hall experienced since she was 16 and her world turned upside down, she has remained steadfast in hope and Love. She was shunned, she was made to feel dirty, shame, and guilt - no just by strangers or school friends or the father of her child, but her parents.This book is a testament to the love between a child and mother. As the years passed since Memorial Day 1966, Meredith never forgets her baby - the baby everyone was ashamed of, that everyone shunned her because of, the baby that was her only companion and solace until he was born. For 21 years she counts his birthdays and thinks of him growing up... each of them without the other. This book is also a record of the attitude that society had (and still has) about the mothers and children that form the base of the adoption industry. How Dr. Quinn talks to Meredith and his careless placement of her baby in an abusive home speaks volumes.When birth-mother, adoptive mother, and their child meet we see three people with the same heart - a heart filled with love and forgiveness and hope. Meredith Hall has written a story - her story - that not only will open eyes but will open minds and hearts as well. All our parents stories are the beginning of our stories.4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. A Poetic Rendering of Profound Grief and AlienationBy Fairbanks Reader - Bonnie BrodyThis is a deep, insightful and poignant memoir. Meredith Hall candidly looks back at her adolescence, the painful time that shaped her young adulthood and created a sense of deep existential angst, alienaton from society, and the inability to form intimate relationships with others.At 16 years of age, Ms. Hall had a child which she gave up for adoption. At the same time, she was no longer permitted to live with her mother and had to move to her father's home where she endured the cold judgment of a passive father and a condemning stepmother. Ms. Hall's live became shame-based and filled with grief. Her days and months were measured by how old her child would be at that time along with her feelings of being an outcast with no place of rest.As Roethke said "What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance." I believe that this quote describes Ms. Hall's situation. She writes a chapter about walking/wandering throughout Europe and Asia - - just walking to try and walk off the shame, grief, dissociation, and displacement. She can not connect with anyone, including herself.Over time, as Ms. Hall grows into adulthood, she is able to come to terms with her situation, accept her grief and live her life. She has children of her own and meets the son she gave up for adoption. The book describes their relationship. It also describes the difficult and strained relationships that the author has with her parents and siblings throughout her life.The contents of this book read like poetry. The profound sadness and grief are poetic in their rendering and I was tearful at many points in this beautifully written book. I can not give it a high enough recommendation. The chapter about Ms. Hall's wandering in Europe and Asia is one of the best pieces of writing that I have ever read.