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Book Review: The Girl from the Well (Series, #1)
Summary:
A dead girl walks the streets.
She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.
And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.
Because the boy has a terrifying secret – one that would just killto get out.
Review:
The official pitch on this one is that it’s Dexter meets The Grudge but what I heard about it was it’s another version of the Japanese myth that The Ring is based on. (After reading it, I can tell you that this is true). I was absolutely batshit terrified of The Ring when I first watched it. I must admit that I read this description and expected the book to me meh compared to the movie based on the same myth. This low expectation is what kept the book from being a disappointing read for me.
I found the writing to be overwrought and trying too hard for the actual genre and plot. Like when the small town seamstress thinks she’s a haute couture fashion designer. For instance:
His mind tastes like sour wine, a dram of sake left out in the dark for too long. (location 63)
Bear in mind that this passage is about a ghost girl who murders child killers/rapists. It’s a pretty passage; it just doesn’t fit.
As far as the plot goes, while I really liked the ghost, the tattooed boy’s plot rubbed me the wrong way. His mother is deemed mentally ill, partially for trying to kill him and tattooing him when he was a child. We later find out that rather than being mentally ill she was battling literal evil spirits, one in particular who wanted to go out and wreak havoc on the world. To try to bind the spirit, she decides to sacrifice her own child to the evil spirit by using him as an anchor, basically, to bind him. So after a bunch of the book basically saying hey the kid should forgive his mother because she’s ill we find out she did this act. I feel like the book wants me to think it’s heroic, but I thought it was sick. The way I felt the book wanted me to feel and the way I actually felt about the situation made me uncomfortable with the rest of the book and struggling with who to root for. Others may feel less conflicted than me over this part of the plot.
Overall, it’s a unique plot that other readers may enjoy more than myself.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 267 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
Book Review: The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor’s Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder by Olga Trujillo, JD
Summary:
Olga was a young, successful lawyer in DC when she suddenly started having inexplicable panic attacks and episodes of blank stares or rapidly moving eyes. She sees a psychiatrist and is diagnosed with a moderate case on DID. On the spectrum, she has multiple parts but not exclusive personalities and still has a central core. These parts have kept the memories of her extraordinarily violent, abusive childhood from her consciousness thereby allowing her to function, but just barely. In her memoir, Olga tells what she has now remembered of her childhood and how she has now discovered she managed to function and be surprisingly resilient. She then delves into her long-term therapy and how she has come together into mostly one part and usually no longer dissociates.
Review:
I always find memoirs by those with DID or dissociation completely fascinating. Even just the ability to write the book and explain the disorder from the insider’s perspective is a remarkable achievement. I previously read When Rabbit Howls
Olga offers up a very precise trigger warning of which chapters could be dangerous for fellow trauma survivors. That said, I found her reporting of what occurred to her to be respectful of herself as a person. She never shirks from what happened to her, but is sure to couch it in concise, clinical language. I respect this decision on her part, and again believe it will make her book more accessible to a wider audience. People can see the results of the trauma without finding themselves witnesses to the trauma itself.
The book right up through about halfway through her therapy is clear and detailed, but then starts to feel rushed and more vague. Perhaps this is out of respect for the people currently in her life, but personally I wanted to know more. For instance, how was she able to make a drastic move from DC to the middle of the country without upsetting her healing process? How do the phone sessions with her therapist work? I think many advocates of those with mental illness would appreciate more detail on how she is able to have a healthy, happy relationship now, especially since we witness the dissolution of her first marriage. Similarly, I wanted to know more about her coming out process. She states that she knew at 12 she was a lesbian, but pretty much leaves it at that. I’m sure it was easier to embrace her sexuality the more integrated her parts became, but I am still interested in the process. She was so brave recounting her early life that I wonder at the exclusion of these details.
Overall this is a well-written memoir of both childhood abuse, therapy for DID, and living with DID. Olga is an inspirational person, overcoming so much to achieve both acclaim in her career and a happy home life. I recommend it to a wide range of people from those interested in the immigrant experience to those interested in living with a mental illness.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 258 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
Book Review: The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls
Summary:
Jeannette Walls, a successful writer for MSNBC, hid the real story of her childhood for years. In her memoir she finally lets the world know the truth. She was raised by an alcoholic father and an incredibly selfish artist mother, both of whom were brilliant. Yet their personal demons and quirks meant Jeannette was raised in near constant neglect and also suffered emotional and some physical abuse. The memoir chronicles her changing perception of her parents from brilliant counter-culturalists to an embarassment she wanted to escape.
Review:
Jeannette’s memoir is incredibly well-written. She manges to recapture her young perceptions at each point in the story from her idolization of her father at the age of five to her disgust at her mother at the age of fifteen. Often memoirs about bad childhoods are entirely caught up in the writer’s knowledge as an adult that this was all wrong. While this is most certainly true, it makes for a better experience for the reader to almost feel what it is like for a child to become disillusioned of her parents. Children naturally love their parents, and abused and/or neglected children are no different. It is just for them instead of just realizing their parents are human like children from normal families do, they also realize that their parents screwed them over. Jeannette subtly and brilliantly presents this realization and all the pain that comes with it. She doesn’t want to believe her father would endanger her when he’s drunk. She doesn’t want to believe that her mother makes her children eat popcorn for three days straight while she herself pigs out on all the king-sized chocolate bars she can eat. Yet Jeannette cannot escape the facts.
This memoir is also different from other bad childhood memoirs in that Jeannette never loses compassion for her parents. As her awareness grows throughout the book, she also struggles to understand how her parents ended up the way they did. [Spoiler Warning] A particularly moving scene is when the family goes to visit Jeannette’s father’s mother in spite of his protests. Jeannette walks in on her grandmother claiming to be mending her brother’s pants while they are still on him, but actually groping him. Jeannette’s reaction, after saving her brother from the groping, is to wonder if maybe this is why her father drinks so much. Maybe her grandmother did the same thing to her father, and there was no one to save him. Maybe these are really the demons he is fighting. To realize this, to even care about it after everything her father has put her through is truly remarkable. [End Spoiler]
Jeannette is an excellent writer and an incredible human being. Readers will be astounded not only at her unique, messed-up childhood but also at how she overcame it and simultaneously maintained sympathy for her parents who so wronged her. Jeannette is an inspiration in multiple ways, and her memoir is definitely worth the read.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Library
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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