Book review: Hidden Valley Road, by Robert Kolker (Amazon / Book Depository) The symptoms muffle nothing and amplify everything. They're deafening, overpowering for the subject and frightening for those who love them -- impossible for anyone close to them to process intellectually. For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation... Continue Reading →
Carmen Maria Machado’s Stylistic, Genre-Bending Memoir of Domestic Abuse
Book review: In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado (Amazon / Book Depository) Author Carmen Maria Machado writes a groundbreaking, stylistic account of an emotionally and mentally abusive lesbian relationship, and underscores the message that domestic abuse in LGBTQ+ relationships are neither the subject of adequate scholarship nor open discussion, nor even, to some... Continue Reading →
Three Looks at Female Desire in ‘Three Women’
Book review: Three Women, by Lisa Taddeo (Amazon / Book Depository) Journalist Lisa Taddeo crisscrossed the country interviewing women about desire for eight years, eventually selecting three for deep-diving in Three Women. She moved to two of their towns in order to examine desire and the innermost details of their sex lives from their perspectives.... Continue Reading →
Nonfiction Classic on Making Fear Work For You
Book review: The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker (Amazon / Book Depository) Do not listen to the TV news checklist of what to do, or the magazine article's checklist of what to do, or the story about what your friend did. Listen to the wisdom that comes from having heard it all by... Continue Reading →
Memoir Essays of Abuse, Upbringing and Mental Illness from an Indigenous Voice
Book review: Heart Berries, by Terese Marie Mailhot I avoid the mysticism of my culture. My people know there is a true mechanism that runs through us. Stars were people in our continuum. Mountains were stories before they were mountains. Things were created by story. The words were conjurers, and ideas were our mothers. Terese... Continue Reading →
An Unflinching Look at An FBI Career in Crimes Against Kids
In the Name of the Children, by Jeffrey Rinek (Amazon / Book Depository) Jeffrey Rinek, retired FBI agent and owner of a majestic mustache, writes a memoir detailing cases he worked during his career, particularly in the area of child sex crimes and the infamous Yosemite murders, where three tourists (Carole and Juli Sund and Silvina... Continue Reading →
Pain and Consequences for the Second Generation of the Children of God
Book review: Jesus Freaks, by Don Lattin (Amazon / Book Depository) This was an okay book, but nowhere near a great one, and I'd say there are multiple reasons not to read it. One of them being that Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" will be stuck in your head nonstop for the duration of reading it.... Continue Reading →
A Memoir of Violence and Complicated Memory
Book review: The Other Side, by Lacy M. Johnson (Amazon / Book Depository) The short version: Lacy Johnson was kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend and held prisoner in a soundproofed basement he'd constructed solely for the purpose of raping and brutally killing her. He didn't succeed in killing her. This book is about that event, how it... Continue Reading →
A Light in the Darkest Places
Book review: The Only Girl in the World, by Maude Julien (Amazon / Book Depository) My father is convinced that the mind can achieve anything. Absolutely anything: it can overcome every danger and conquer every obstacle. But to do this requires long, rigorous training away from the impurities of this dirty world. He’s always saying,... Continue Reading →
Inside a Manhattan New Age Cult
Book review: The Cult Next Door, by Elizabeth Burchard Amazon When cults make the news, it's often because they've done something awful on a compound somewhere, or in the jungles of Guyana. This memoir shows the mesmerizing power of a cult close to home, one that forms in the heart of a major metropolis, in one of Manhattan's poshest... Continue Reading →
Tales of a Teen Rehab From Hell
Book review: The Dead Inside, by Cyndy Etler In the late 80s, Cyndy Etler seemed to be a fairly typical Connecticut teenager. Her real problem was abuse at the hands of her creepy French stepfather, which her mother noticed and ignored, leaving her daughter instead to struggle to defend herself. With that kind of frustration in her home... Continue Reading →