"Woman of Interest is a memoir wrapped in a mystery—an inward examination of family, identity, and self, but also an actual gumshoe detective story that takes the author to the other side of the world. With each extraordinary, prickly sentence, O’Neill’s search for her biological mother is conjured with clarity and conflict. This is a work that is funny, moving, mean—an exceptional book from an extraordinary writer." — Kevin Nguyen, author of New Waves
"Woman of Interest is a brilliantly constructed Russian doll of a memoir—a profound meditation on language and desire within an insightful family mythology within a propulsive detective story. How does Tracy O’Neill hold it all together? With a rare combination of exquisite prose, good humor, and intellectual rigor." — Nadia Owusu, author of Aftershocks
"Know this: Tracy O’Neill has a novelist’s sense of narrative, the eye and ear of a poet, and the luminous mind of young philosopher—gifts woven into an innovative, propulsive, and trenchant memoir about the search for self and one’s roots as well as the evolution of family myths. This book, as is Tracy, is an exemplar of literary brilliance." — Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Survival Math
"With Woman of Interest, Tracy O’Neill solidifies her status as one of our greatest living prose stylists. With a singular wit and brilliance, O’Neill expands the horizons of the memoir, pushing the boundaries of the genre into the realm of detective noir and thrilling quest narrative. O’Neill’s formal innovations and bracing prose create a new and invigorating lens through which readers can view a universal theme: the desire to search for the self and one’s source." — Chloé Cooper Jones, author of Easy Beauty
"A funny, effervescent addition to the memoir-as-detective-story genre." — Nicole Chung, Esquire
"A fascinating and immersive look at identity, dedication and unanswered questions." — Tobias Carroll, InsideHook
"Resembles what experimental jazz would be like if it were a written narrative. Funny, shocking, and emotionally charged, the memoir takes readers on [O'Neill's] journey of self-discovery and finding what family means." — Library Journal
"Cool, noir-tinted prose shot through with wit and compassion, O’Neill presents her inquiry as a sort of metaphysical detective story. Readers will be riveted." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"O’Neill’s prose brims with intelligence, energy, and humor." — New York
"[An] urgent, atmospheric memoir meets noir about family shadows, writing, and the pursuit of searching for answers we know we might never find." — Oprah Daily
"The literature of the Korean adoptee typically circles around a fundamental void, an abyss: the loss of the biological mother….O’Neill elevates the subgenre, producing a memoir that is simultaneously an investigation, a noir with a femme fatale, and a darkly humorous tale of what happens when one meets the person who has everything and nothing to do with one’s life….Instead of the reparative gestures of a traditional adoptee memoir, Woman of Interest offers something darker, colder, more fraught, and ultimately, singular and transcendent." — Patrick Cottrell, Bomb
"O’Neill is a true stylist; her prose brims with intelligence, energy, and humor. This memoir exploring identity and family is unlike any other." — Vulture
"O’Neill leverages her significant talent to infuse the tension of a hard-boiled mystery novel into an exploration of motherhood, identity, and belonging." — Bustle
"By choosing the tone of a noir, she inhabits a narrative space full of macabre humor, plot twists and offbeat characters. Her sentences run to the jangling and unpredictable rhythms of the classic detective story, with spare descriptions and snappy, deadpan dialogue. ... O’Neill reports on a quest that, while uniquely her own in terms of form and content, is also relatable to anyone who has ever looked in the mirror and wondered, 'Who am I, really? And who are my people?'" — BookPage
"One of the most distinctive prose stylists writing today…[O’Neill] approaches this deeply personal quest like an icy cool spy on an assignment of international espionage." — Boston Globe
"There are some new summer books that have nothing to do with fiction, but read like a mystery novel. This is one of them." — Brit + Co
2024-03-09
An account of the author’s search for her biological mother in 2020.
“I was thirty-three, adopted, Korean born, New England bred. Profession: writer. And because no one made a living writing anymore, profession: professor….I had not evaded taxes, but I had evaded children.” O’Neill clearly lays out the situation at the beginning, noting that her desire to find the woman who birthed her and gave her up is twofold. First, she writes, “my life depended on this missing person. I mean she had been one of my mothers.” Second, she sought “confirmation that I was a woman still able to write a new narrative into her life.” The two-time novelist and Vassar professor filed a missing person’s report for her biological mother. The ensuing conversations with a private investigator are entertaining. At the end of the year, O’Neill traveled alone to Korea for a few weeks to meet her mother. “I did not know what I was really doing,” she writes, “but perhaps a person of interest never did.” The narrative sometimes gets mired in the author’s self-focus, and the latter half describes meeting her mother in person. “She was there,” writes the author. “Right there. And the impression she gave was of an idling Xerox machine. To reach her seemed impossible.” The author’s details and nuanced layers of longing feel genuine, vulnerable, and vivid. Even after the end of the search, her investigation continued: “As it turns out, autobiography can’t be abandoned as easily as a bad alibi, or a child. At a certain point, the question is not, What will you do next? It is, once more, How did I do what I did?” This is not a story of redemption, but it is heartbreakingly human.
A propulsive, occasionally meandering memoir.
