Blue-Eyed Son

Nicky Campbell

I wasn't going to review this book even though I was gripped by it and I feel like I have lots to say. The emotions are just too raw. It always feels as if, with adoption, when it's handled in books or films or as real life stories in the media, then the "story" is always the reunion between birth mother and child. That is the big story. And we the adopting parents are taught, in our "training", to think positively and celebrate this relationship between our child and this other adult. It's a lesson I've learnt and absorbed and try to follow for the sake of my daughter's emotional health. But it's hard. Blue-Eyed Son is about a man's search for his birth parents.

Nicky Campbell is lucky. In his book he mentions friends and acquaintances who have traced their birth families only to be rebuffed and he also describes other adopted friends with unhappy memories of their adoption and their adopted family. But his own experiences with "both" families are wholly positive.

Blue-Eyed Son starts with a description of growing up in a warm, secure, loving adopted family in Edinburgh. The book quickly skips over the period in his twenties when his radio and TV career was taking off. Nevertheless the experience of reading such an intimate story (more intimate and strange than the average celebrity biography) when the man himself is all over our radios almost every morning is a strange one.

Two things are known about adopted people and their search for a birth relative. One is that women are more likely to search than men. The second is that the search is usually triggered by a major life event; often the death of an adopting mum or dad or the birth of a child. In the case of Nicky Campbell his first marriage was on the rocks. Nicky's birth relatives (on both the mother's and the father's sides) are thrilled when he traces them - in fact the book is in a sense one long happy ending - and genuine warmth and affection and kinship develops on boths sides. But he also has a wonderful adoptive family - his real family, if you'll allow me - to fall back on.

As I wrote at the start the material makes for an absorbing read. But stylistically it's no masterpiece. Nicky Campbell admits at one point to keeping a notebook of musings and one-liners - as they come to him - for use later in his radio shows. It's plain his book is equally lovingly decorated with phrases the author feels rather pleased with. In the case of sentences like "everything's relative and I've discovered my relatives are everything" the temptation should have been resisted. On the other hand a friend read this book and pronounced it superbly well written so it could just be me.

The book's grand finale is a celebration of his dad - his adopted dad. At the end of the book I had tears in my eyes.