In his memoir, Pelullo recounts the repeated sexual molestations he suffered as a child and how he and his parents kept the acts a secret for more than 40 years.
Pelullo has written a frank, often painful account of his molestation perpetrated at the hands of two older boys in his neighborhood. (One of his rapists was the son of one of his mother’s best friends.) When Pelullo’s parents discovered the truth, they took him to their family doctor who advised them not to discuss it and hopefully Pelullo would forget the experience. As an adult, the author became a leader in his industry and the leader of his family, the man to help his siblings, nieces and nephews. But Pelullo’s rape made him incapable of intimacy, and he grew into a cold, detached, nervous man. He couldn’t give up control, couldn’t see the connection between love and intimacy; he saw only sex, a release, a calming influence, and he sought out women he sensed were as emotionally damaged as he. Thinking the love of a good woman from a fine family would save him, Pelullo married an attractive woman from his neighborhood, and they adopted two sons. For many years, Pelullo kept his secret, hiding the truth and cringing at human warmth and touch. When his sons were older, an e-mail left on Pelullo’s computer screen was found by one of his boys, and the incident forced Pelullo to face his demons, leave his home and family and begin a long journey of recovery. He could no longer be his extended family’s leader, fixing their problems; he learned he had to take care of himself first. After seeing several psychologists, reading many books, joining a group for men and women in the grip of sex addiction, making a new connection with his spiritual side and facing the responsibility for his mistakes, Pelullo eventually remarried his wife and founded the Let Go…Let Peace Come In Foundation, an online community where survivors of child molestation can tell their stories and continue the healing process. Pelullo’s story is well-told, written with smooth transitions that keep the narrative flowing. As a successful businessman lacking a college education, the author might be expected to produce a choppy, disorganized work at worst, or, at best, a dull, workmanlike story that covers all the bases but doesn’t engage the reader. However, Pelullo does an admirable job of bringing the reader into his painfully honest story, offering a beacon to other victims of sexual abuse and addiction. An impressive, candid effort from a first-time author.
Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615486253
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Only Serenity
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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