All My Mothers And Fathers

Claustrophobic, self-obsessed memoir by poet and novelist Blumenthal (Weinstock Among the Dying, 1993) that examines the scars inflicted by his unusual family circumstances and their continuing effects on his life.
Until he was ten, Blumenthal believed he was the only son of German-born furrier Julius and his wife Betty, who had escaped the Nazis to settle in New York. Though embarrassed by his father's poor English and extrovert behavior, he had a happy childhood punctuated by holidays in the Catskills and visits to his uncle and aunt, Berthold and Nelly Gern, on their chicken farm in New Jersey. But when Betty died of breast cancer, Blumenthal learned that the Gerns were his real parents. Recently immigrated from Israel and too poor to rear another child, they had given him to Berthold's childless sister Betty. Then Julius remarried, and widow Alice Kahn proved to be the "archetype of the wicked stepmother . . . incapable of anything bordering on genuine human affection." Michael was tempted to flee to the Gerns, but his affection for his adoptive father prevailed. Moving back and forward over the years, Blumenthal briefly details his education, adolescent adventures with girls, career, two marriages, and the birth of a son he hopes to raise free of the traumas that shaped his childhood. He also recalls Julius's sexual envy of his success with women and vituperative attacks on his gentile wives, as well as Alice's miserliness: she makes off with most of his bar mitzvah presents, including a typewriter. The deaths of his father and stepmother further embitter him when their wills reveal additional betrayals. Blumenthal writes vividly and elegantly, but though his tribulations were unquestionably troubling for him, he doesn't succeed in convincing the reader that they were as terrible as he clearly found them. He was always clothed, fed, and educated, so his plaint often sounds more like a narcissistic whine than a searing litany of horrors.
Obviously heartfelt, but unaffecting.