So as I said before-this book was hard to get into. I tend to believe I have a high threshold for painful subject matter and I have read worse accounts of abuse before, but something just did not sit well with me here. Actually, it’s simple–it just wasn’t good.
Even if it really was written by an uneducated young man who went through these horrible experiences–it still wouldn’t be a good book. I’d feel empathy, maybe a slight intrigue, but ultimately–I’d come to the same conclusion. The fact that it is written by an educated older woman who went through all of this trouble to fool people–makes it even worse. Not because I think she is a disturbing sick individual (imagination –even if it’s dark and horrific is essential to being a fiction writer)–but because the writing is I believe -crap.
I can follow the way it jumps around although it kind of annoys me, but I don’t believe she created any real depth to her characters. I want to feel empathy for this [poor] abused boy–but the things he says, does and believes make me more frustrated than anything. Sarah, the also once abused child–now mother who is torturing her son- seems more caricature than a character resembling a real human being. During one point of the novel–Sarah recounts a story of when she was beaten by her father and I think it was supposed to make the reader kind of understand her and maybe feel something other than hate/disgust– but it just made me roll my eyes. Neither she or Jeremiah seemed human to me and that got under my skin more than the countless stories of a mother holding her son’s “thing”(as it is referred to) while one of her boyfriends beat him senseless. No matter how horrific a life can be– there are moments -maybe just brief moments–of humanity from somewhere/someone. I found no humanity in this book and that just got on my nerves.
It was a marketing ploy. A young man with a terrible life purges as much of it as possible through his writing. Wow, what strength he has! If he can rise from hell on earth to a life of a successful writer with a steady following–then we can all certainly do something with our own lives.
The sad truth is– the stories of the [real] lives of abused children were taken advantage of and mocked by this pointless, empty, and just plain bad book written by a non-talented writer. I resented having my face forcibly pushed into the foul smelling feces contained within the text. That is the best way I can think of describing the feeling I had as I was reading.
I hated it. I am not going to read Sarah and I urge all of you not to read these books either–unless you are glutton for punishment.
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