cantordustbunnies 's review for:

Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities by Flora Rheta Schreiber

3.0

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Recklessly fraudulent, exploitative, and responsible for a good deal of public misinformation this book (which is not especially well-written) would have made for a decent piece of spooky science fiction but is disgusting as something which claims to be a factual account. If you read it without taking it seriously it does possess a great deal of chilling, dramatic entertainment value. There is something very gripping about the whole premise which is the reason behind its success and the abuse detailed within is genuinely, perhaps ghoulishly, horrific. It is metaphorical and approaches the literary but steadfastly remains cheaply commercial. I ultimately liked Sybil in a "guilty pleasure" sort of way because it is so bizarre, delinquent, often melodramatic, and so full of chicanery that it becomes positively campy. I wonder how many people with relatively minor mental illness or attention seeking traits have had their life derailed because of this book?