A startling testament of survival.
A disturbing, engrossing memoir of a bizarre, highly abusive childhood.
Psychotherapist Julien makes her literary debut with a gripping chronicle of growing up imprisoned and tormented by her parents. Isolated on a walled estate not far from Dunkirk, Julien was raised to become a “superior being,” destined to “control the weak-minded and bring about the great regeneration of the universe.” Her father, a paranoid, narcissistic conspiracy theorist, “a Grand Master of Freemasonry and a great knight of a secret order,” had adopted and then married Julien’s mother, who assisted in the demanding, cruel regimen that he designed to shape their daughter’s body and mind. They locked her in a dank, rat-infested cellar, forbidding her to move (her mother sewed bells in her sweater to monitor disobedience). They also attempted to quash any signs of love or compassion; Julien had to cage her gentle dog every day, and when her beloved horse died, they made her dig a hole to bury it. Her father bought the horse not as a pet for Julien but to make sure she learned to ride: “just like swimming, riding will be very useful if I need to escape” persecution and also “to be able to get a job with a circus in case I have to hide or go undercover at some point.” They forced her to bathe in their own dirty bathwater: “an honor,” her father said, that “allows you to benefit from my energies when they enter your body.” They refused to summon a doctor when she was ill, and they ignored her being sexually abused by their lecherous handyman. Finally, when Julien was an adolescent, a kind, observant music teacher assessed the situation and contrived to give her lessons at his own studio; he soon hired her to work for him part-time and introduced her to a young man who married her. Although she escaped physically, Julien admits, “being outside wasn’t enough to make me free.” Years of therapy led her to become a therapist herself.
A startling testament of survival.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-46662-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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