Tag: trauma

2018, book review, narrative nonfiction

Cleaning the Pain of Others’ Lives With Lessons Learned From Her Own

Book review: The Trauma Cleaner, by Sarah Krasnostein (Amazon / Book Depository) This is how it ends, sometimes, with strangers in gloves looking at your blood and your too-many bottles of shampoo and your now-ironic Make Positive Changes postcard of Krishna and the last TV channel you flipped to on the night you died and the way the sun hits the tree outside your bedroom … Continue reading Cleaning the Pain of Others’ Lives With Lessons Learned From Her Own

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2014, book review, memoir

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 affected her and her relationships over the following years, the ways … Continue reading A Memoir of Violence and Complicated Memory

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americana, book review, memoir, narrative nonfiction, true crime

A Daughter After Her Mother: Rich Storytelling of Memoir and Murder

Book review: After the Eclipse, by Sarah Perry Amazon She believed in the souls of housecats and in the melancholy of rainy days. She believed in hard work, and the energy she poured into her job — hand-sewing shoes at a factory — seemed boundless…She was terrified of birds, at close range, and moths, at any distance, their blurred wings beating the air, their flight paths unpredictable…The clicking … Continue reading A Daughter After Her Mother: Rich Storytelling of Memoir and Murder

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2017, book review, essays, memoir

Roxane Gay on Hunger in Its Many Forms

Book review: Hunger, by Roxane Gay (Amazon / Book Depository) The story of my body is not a story of triumph. This is not a weight-loss memoir. There will be no picture of a thin version of me, my slender body emblazoned across this book’s cover, with me standing in one leg of my former, fatter self’s jeans. This is not a book that will … Continue reading Roxane Gay on Hunger in Its Many Forms

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