Casey's thoughtful account of the formation and integration of her 24 separate personalities. Diagnosed in 1981 as a multiple personality by therapist Wilson—whose case notes intersperse Casey's narrative—Casey initially resisted that finding, but slowly acknowledged her many selves. Among them were brilliant scholar Jo, worldly art lover Isis, and people-pleasing party girl Renee, with these relatively enviable personalities coexisting next to others who were childish, frightened, and suicidal—created, as multiples always are, to deal with abuse: in this case, from a raping father and a cold, demanding mother. Reconstructing the origins of the personalities forms the heart of Casey's touching story. As depicted here, the characteristics and motivations of all the personalities are straightforward and affecting, although Casey does not succeed in giving each an individual or even realistic voice. Rusty, a boy personality charged with placating Casey's father, talks like someone cut from an Andy Hardy film, while Renee seems decidedly down-to-earth for a self-described flirt. Of high interest also are Wilson's notes, which will probably appall orthodox psychiatrists as they detail how she broke every treatment rule in the book to heal Casey. Wilson and her husband, for example, always commingle their lives with that of a patient, and became in Casey's instance surrogate parents to all the personalities. The trio's first session together typifies the intimate therapy style: Wilson's husband ambled into the office, shucked off his jacket, and sat on the floor. A compelling psychological odyssey offering unique insights into a nightmare world.
Pub Date: May 29, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-56842-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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