A review by pippa_w
The Choice: Escape Your Past and Embrace the Possible by Edith Eva Eger

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad

”Just remember, no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.”

One of those books that feels entirely odd to rate, so I won’t.

Why is this night different from all other nights? Before dawn breaks, we’ll know.

This is a harrowing, no-punches-pulled memoir of Dr Edith Edger’s survival of the Holocaust and the concentration camps, yes, but it is predominantly a look into how this experience and her work as a psychologist shaped both her recovery and her more generalised approach to mental health.

Eger and her uncredited co-writer Esmé Schawlow Weigand are together an extraordinary, beautiful storyteller, and this book is gripping and engaging from beginning to end. It definitely runs a little long - there are a few client stories that could easily have been cut - but when there’s this much insight and balance and raw honesty, it’s hard to mind.

Don’t let the introduction, which reeks of toxic positivity and was ill-conceived for the self-help book audience, put you off. This book contains far less cliché and far more depth and nuance and tact than would be suggested by a first chapter that reads, “I would love to help you discover how to escape the concentration camp of your own mind and become the person you were meant to be.”

When we abdicate taking responsibility for ourselves, we are giving up our ability to create and discover meaning. In other words, we give up on life.