Frank and edifying information on Scientology from a woman who experienced it firsthand. A good complement to Lawrence...
A former Scientologist examines why she entered the church and then left it.
Hall (English/Franklin & Marshall Coll.; Tools of the Writer’s Craft, 2005, etc.) didn't intend to join with the Scientologists, but when she fell in love with a man who was deeply committed to the Church of Scientology, her resolve was slowly worn away. In this revealing memoir, the author explains her many conflicting emotions toward the religion before, during, and after her seven years as a Scientologist. Aspects of the structure appealed to her—e.g., the examining of words and the ability to work out problems so they didn't fester—but other parts deeply bothered her: the expenses involved in purchasing the books written by L. Ron Hubbard and of attending classes, the lifetime (and beyond) commitment required to reach a higher level, and some of the controversial tactics that she heard were used by some Scientologists. Throughout the book, Hall interweaves the story of her family, particularly of her older brother, Oakley, a wild child and wilder adult who eventually took one risk too many and suffered permanent consequences. The author is sincere and open about why Scientology appealed to her, and she effectively uses Hubbard's work to show the complexity and strangeness of thinking. Using the terminology of the Scientologists, she discusses the tactics of "auditing," or counseling, the training routines, the endless drills she went through to learn the Tech, and the anxiety she felt when she had to visit the “Ethics Officer.” All of these tactics are used to drill into the minds of believers that Hubbard's version of reality is the absolute truth. Hall risks her friendships with Scientologists by revealing what she experienced, and her work serves as a significant behind-the-scenes look at this cultlike religion.
Frank and edifying information on Scientology from a woman who experienced it firsthand. A good complement to Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear (2013).Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61902-178-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
