I am ambivalent about this book. It is a page-turner; it is easy to read, and it is salacious. But it is also cold, distant, and doesn't offer anything particularly insightful about motivation or causes of the familial dysfunction, other than the mother's remoteness from her children and the father's diffidence.I wondered at several times whether this was indeed biography, or just an elaborate fiction, along the lines of an earlier generation's "Go Ask Alice". A bit of Internet research suggests that it is indeed real, and that the author set out with a forensic-like dispassionate intent.
I suppose I had expected something a little bit more personal. I am pleased it does not have the schmaltzy tones of a bad telemovie. It certainly desrcibes in exquisite and distressingdetail the processes of mental and physical abuse, but it is all conveyed as a description of a specimen on a glass slide.
Read it, and don't weep - for there is no emotional connection made with this reader, at least!
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