THE GREAT PEACE

In her powerful debut memoir, the actor demonstrates both candor and storytelling skill.

Suvari is stunningly straightforward about how she survived—and even flourished—despite years of sexual and emotional abuse. There will be tabloid interest in The Great Peace, named for “a book of poetry and stories” she wrote as an escape from her troubled teenage years, but this is much more than a celebrity tell-all. The author unflinchingly reveals that she was raped at age 12 by a childhood friend, discusses her suicide attempt, and examines her numerous questionable relationships with older men as she started her career as a young actor. Though Suvari doesn’t include anything about the sexual harassment allegations against her American Beauty co-star Kevin Spacey, she does tell a story about an unusual ploy Spacey used to prepare for a pivotal scene in the movie. The author also frankly explores the problems with her previous two marriages even though they are not always flattering for her. As an award-winning veteran actor, Suvari is already known as a masterful visual storyteller, and the craftsmanship she exhibits here is impressive. “It was too hard to verbalize some of my traumas, even to my therapist….Those memories were like walls that kept me from escaping,” she writes about her first real experience in therapy. “I had become too used to pretending I was okay.” Each bite-sized chapter skillfully builds on the experiences of the previous one while foreshadowing what is to come, creating a page-turner that propels the streamlined narrative forward. Even when, in the story, Suvari seems stuck in a destructive relationship, she offers enough hints that suggest she’ll make it out. How she does it is a rewarding journey worth taking. “I want [the book] to serve as the flickering light at the end of a dark road showing there is a way out,” she writes in the author’s note. “And there is.”

Suvari’s bracing tale of abusive patterns and building new beginnings is wrenching, potent, and ultimately inspirational.