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toggle_fow 's review for:
A Stolen Life
by Jaycee Dugard
Terrifying.
This book is simple, told in a matter-of-fact understated style that clearly evokes the eleven-year-old girl's experiences. Confusion and survival on every page. It's easy to see that this was written more as an inward-turned healing, reflective exercise than a spit-and-polished narrative crafted for public consumption.
The plain, honest prose is easy to read. The content is equally honest, and is not.
A less scary detail that stands out almost as much is how much Ms. Dugard loves animals. There is more content here about the various pets and animals she interacted with over the years than the big events of her captive life. That must be part of how she survived -- focusing on what she loved and letting everything else become just background. There is very little anger allowed in this book, and more of it is focused on one of her captors' negligent care of a parakeet than anything that happened to herself.
I've read several survivor memoirs before, and it's crazy how easily something becomes your new reality. Humans are wired to adapt to live. It's the difficulty people in ordinary abusive relationships have wrapping their head around what's happening to them, turned up to Stockholm Syndrome level ten. In this, Ms. Dugard's psychic scars are still visible. It will be the work of a lifetime to overturn all the survival mechanisms she learned so well, and after so long in captivity, what would you expect?
It's also crazy that people seem to only very rarely be rescued by intrepid police work. Nine out of ten times, it seems like they owe their rescue to:
It scares me to know that in that situation, most of the time no one is coming for you.
This book is simple, told in a matter-of-fact understated style that clearly evokes the eleven-year-old girl's experiences. Confusion and survival on every page. It's easy to see that this was written more as an inward-turned healing, reflective exercise than a spit-and-polished narrative crafted for public consumption.
The plain, honest prose is easy to read. The content is equally honest, and is not.
A less scary detail that stands out almost as much is how much Ms. Dugard loves animals. There is more content here about the various pets and animals she interacted with over the years than the big events of her captive life. That must be part of how she survived -- focusing on what she loved and letting everything else become just background. There is very little anger allowed in this book, and more of it is focused on one of her captors' negligent care of a parakeet than anything that happened to herself.
I've read several survivor memoirs before, and it's crazy how easily something becomes your new reality. Humans are wired to adapt to live. It's the difficulty people in ordinary abusive relationships have wrapping their head around what's happening to them, turned up to Stockholm Syndrome level ten. In this, Ms. Dugard's psychic scars are still visible. It will be the work of a lifetime to overturn all the survival mechanisms she learned so well, and after so long in captivity, what would you expect?
It's also crazy that people seem to only very rarely be rescued by intrepid police work. Nine out of ten times, it seems like they owe their rescue to:
• Being brazenly paraded about in public by an overconfident captor, sure of his power over them.
• A criminal's family member snitching on them.
• Their own intrepid escape.
It scares me to know that in that situation, most of the time no one is coming for you.