Philomena: A Mother, Her Son and A Fifty-Year Search

I think a well-researched and thoroughly sources biography of Michael Hess could be a great book. This book is not that nor is it a story about Philomena's journey. If you picked this up wanting to know more about mother and baby homes or the abuses of the Catholic church in Ireland, I highly, highly recommend We Don't Know Ourselves by Fintan O'Toole. The entire book is gripping for non-fiction and very professionally researched and presented as well as including personal anecdotes, but even if you don't want to read the whole book you can check out chapters that would be relevant to imagining Philomena's life, and keep a fond memory of the movie in your mind. I understand that the story of Michael's life is relevant to telling this story, but it's told in such an off-puttingly, obviously fictional way in this book and so many things are covered in excruciating detail with imagined conversations that could surely have been summarized objectively. The author obviously had a very excited journey writing this and pulling out things that seem sensational about the life of a man who had been dead for nearly 15 years before the book was released, and who previously had not exactly been a public figure. It's weird given that there are mutliple statements from people who actually knew him that this is mostly fiction (including the top review here on goodreads!) Meanwhile the author actually knew Philomena and she seems to be an afterthought