Last night, I met Alison Larkin at the British consulate, where she was launching her debut novel, The English American, at a party which also served as a benefit fundraiser for the St. George’s Society, a 238-year-old organization providing financial assistance to elderly and disabled Brits in the States. The novel is based quite loosely on Larkin’s own experiences as an American who was adopted shortly after birth by English parents and raised—well, all over the world, because they were in the Foreign Service, but raised British is the point—and then connecting with her biological parents as an adult.
Larkin entertained the small crowd with a combination of extracts from the novel and short fragments from a one-woman stage show, also called The English-American, where she spoke more directly about her own experience, filtering it through the conventions of stand-up comedy, which is where I had the camcorder running…
You can see a slicker, professionally made version of her backstory online as well.