The Birth Mother by Seymour Ubell

“A birth mother is a different kind of mother. The phrase birth mother is a mere technical term. Please, I want to clarify one important fact: she is our birth mother. That means all of us in this room, me and Mom and Fred and you two. [She] is ours, all of us. She is a part of this family. She does not know us, does not love us, and does not care about us. We are strangers to her. And she is an unknown person to us.”

This quote from The Birth Mother is a turning point of the story. It is so powerful and encompasses the role of a biological mother to an adopted family that has been made whole by her act.

First things first, The Birth Mother took me on all kinds of unexpected highs and lows. This was not the book I expected to read when I was first introduced to it. I was pleasantly surprised and read it through in one sitting. I love those kinds of surprises.

While the plot seems to be an unbelievable stretch, it becomes so believably possible. There are so many layers to this story of love and acceptance that spans cultures and continents. I found myself on the edge of my chair, feeling all the emotions. When I read a book, I quickly become a part of the book. I want to know all about the characters lives, how they’re feeling, why things are happening and I got all of that and more.

[Tweet “Read, laugh, cry and learn on a journey from China to Europe to America and back to China where the unusual birth mother enters the lives of her twin daughters and their adopted parents. @AuthorUbell @iReadBookTours”]

Written from the perspective of Daryl Landsman and the author he’s hired to write his family’s history, we learn the story of his twin daughters, their birth mother and the string of events that brings them all together and bonded for life.

This was a great read and one that I could see myself re-reading just to absorb parts that I may not have fully taken in the first time. There are so many themes that are touched on with adoption, Chinese culture, the role of women in their society, international business dealings, cultural norms, and religious beliefs and acceptances.

[Tweet “#TheBirthMother is a story filled with love, pathos, tragedy, and triumph. Read, laugh, cry, and learn. It’s a novel you will never forget. #literaryfiction #fiction @AuthorUbell @iReadBookTours”]

Interview with Seymour Ubell on His Writing Rituals

Seymour Ubell is not a professional author. In fact, he never went to college. His father died when Seymour was seventeen years old and suddenly had to get a job and help support the family. Seymour was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He has lived in Manhattan for the last 40 + years. He is the chairman of an American packaging company with offices in New York, China and Europe. At eighty-eight, the author’s daily routine includes working out every other day at 7 AM in a local NYC gym, breakfasts with friends and arrives at his office each day around 10 AM. By 3 PM he heads home to his wife and continues his research and writing. He spends his weekends enjoying the cultural arts of Manhattan, including the theater, the Philharmonic, movies and his family. He is writing two more novels. The first, almost complete historical novel about his family business which goes back to early 1880 with his great grandfather in the original family shop in Poland. And continues into 2019 in the USA and the rest of the world. Second Love is the title of his other novel. It is about people who divorce, lose their partners from a health problem, an accident or even suicide and find a second act in love and togetherness.

Do you write every day?
I write almost every day.

Where do you write?
I write in my office at home and often in business office, when an idea floats into my mind.

What is your writing schedule?
No schedule… spontaneous

Is there a specific ritualistic thing you do during your writing time?
I eat fruit and drink tea.

In this tech-savvy world, most writers use a laptop, do you ever write long-hand?
I  write using my computer.

Do you read your book out loud while you’re writing?
I read my book out loud when editing.