Justified Anger by Jennifer Colne; Sobering Account of the Effects of Molestation and Incest on a Family

 Justified Anger by Jennifer Colne; Sobering Account of the Effects of Molestation and Incest on a Family 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: It can be difficult for a family when one of their members is the victim of a crime. Sometimes the crime affects more than just the one who was hurt. It can affect everyone around them and fill them with feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, trauma, denial, and activism. Worse than that would be if the perpetrator was a family member as well. The actions and consequences can split a family apart as they take sides.

That is the situation faced by Jennifer Colne in her memoir, Justified Anger. This is a sobering, and unnerving book about the effects of child molestation and incest on her family.

Colne begins her book describing the troubles facing her daughters in 2001 when her eldest Katherine had been hospitalized for mental health problems and her younger daughter, Emma, lost custody of her children in a draining court battle with her abusive ex. This custody fight would lead to Emma being hospitalized as well after a suicide attempt and severe flashbacks. During one of these flashbacks Emma revealed that she was raped by her Uncle David. Later Katherine confessed that the same thing happened to her. David was arrested and charged with counts of rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault. Unfortunately that's not the end of the story. Emma was convinced that she was blocking something from her mind. After a few years and a second marriage, Emma remembered what it was. She was not only raped and molested by her Uncle but by her father, Steve as well.

Colne’s intense descriptions of her daughters' abuse and the aftermath including their fractured mental states reach into the Reader’s souls and understand the pain that this family went through and in many ways are still going through. The abusers left their marks leaving their victims in fragile states unable to cope with many of the stresses in their lives. 

It wasn't just the initial crime of sexual assault that made David and Steve monsters. It was the continuous after effects that created a lifetime of trauma from two innocent girls who were hurt by men that they should have trusted to protect and love them. Katherine and Emma suffered physical, mental, and emotional scars that never fully healed as they got older. They were in tears, raged, and engaged in self harm and addictive behaviors. 

One of the most painful chapters occurs years later when Emma, surrounded by her mother, children, and husband, regresses to a childlike state. Her memories of her childhood were muddled with those of her children. She couldn't separate the past from the present, referred to people in her children's lives by names of people that she knew as a child, could not recall recent memories, or recognize her children in their photos. Skills that she was adept in like cooking became unknown to her. She regressed to a mental child in an adult body. Steve not only robbed his daughter of her childhood by molesting her. He and his brother in law robbed her of her adulthood by replacing a fulfilled life of a good career, happy marriage, secure home, loving children with one of terror, fractured mental states, impulsive dangerous behavior, and internal misery. 

David and especially Steve did more long term damage. They didn't just destroy Katherine and Emma. They broke apart their whole family. Even though the sisters were on the same side in accusing and charging David, they stood on opposite sides when it came to Steve. Colne supported Emma's account recalling earlier moments of sexual, verbal, and physical abuse that her former husband inflicted on her. That was more than Katherine did.

Katherine refused to accept that her own father raped her sister. She claimed that Emma was a liar and was trying to get attention. It is bizarre that a woman who had been sexually assaulted by one family member and developed emotional and psychological problems would not be more empathetic towards her sister who had been going through the same thing. Emma’s state clearly showed that she had been abused if not by their father then by somebody. But unlike her mother who recognized the signs and confirmed Emma's account, Katherine blatantly ignored them and defiantly venerated her father.

Katherine's denial might have been a means to protect herself psychologically and might have been understandable. But the volatile extremes that she went through to discredit Emma are less defensible. She not only purposely sided with her father but influenced other family members to do the same such as her and Emma's younger brother Colne's son, Liam and Emma's own estranged children. They cut not only Emma out of their lives but Colne as well removing themselves of a sister, niece, and mother but also a mother, aunt, and grandmother. 

We don't get any understanding of Katherine's transition from defender and fellow victim to antagonist because it is told by Colne and she clearly doesn't know either. There might be speculation from the Reader but nothing known or said. Instead, Katherine and the rest of Steve's defenders having so much vehement animosity towards his accusers can be seen as yet another crime that can be laid at Steve's feet.

Justified Anger is a realistic book about trauma. People don't always recover after one hospitalization or breakthrough. It sometimes takes many stays and they can exhibit the same behaviors for years and even decades afterwards. Sometimes perpetrators don't get the punishment that they deserve. Sometimes the story doesn't end with hugs and reconciliation. Sometimes it ends with making peace with oneself and that's how Colne ends her book. Her family is still broken. Emma may still have psychological problems. Katherine is still estranged from the rest of the family. But Colne and Emma have made peace with themselves and have strengthened their connections as mother and daughter.

For now, that's enough.

The Water Doesn't Lie (A Dalton and Gibb Investigation) by Kim Booth; Exciting Investigation But Dull Detectives

 

The Water Doesn't Lie (A Dalton and Gibb Investigation) by Kim Booth; Exciting Investigation But Dull Detectives

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Naturally I begin 2024 with a frequent trend found in many of my other reviews. Reading two books of the same genre who are direct polar opposites of each other. Indy Perro’s Journeyman and Kim Booth’s The Water Doesn’t Lie are both Murder Mysteries that emphasize separate components. Journeyman’s mystery plot concerning drug dealing, murder, and gang warfare is nowhere near as compelling as the personal struggles and frienemyship of its two leads, police detective Vincent Bayonne and ex-con, informant, and recent gang leader, Kane Kulpa. Booth’s book on the other hand excels at a mystery that is suspenseful and engaging but is unfortunately investigated by two detectives who so far are interchangeable and completely unidentifiable. 

In 1984, Thomas Ferguson, a young boy at the Lannercraig Children’s Home in Glasgow took his own life. Detective Sergeant Douglas Beattie and Detective Constable Jim Callender investigated the death and allegations of sexual and physical abuse at the children’s home. When they found out some prominent people were involved in covering up the allegations, they were ordered to drop the case. However, Callender and especially Beattie never let the case go and it continued to haunt them even into promotion and retirement. 

21  years later in Lincoln Central Lincolnshire, a dead man is found and appears to have been physically assaulted and drowned. He is identified as Father Patrick Burman and one of his previous places of employment was, you guessed it, the Lannercraig Children’s Home in Glasgow. Detective Sergeant Barry Dalton and Detective Inspector Alex Gibb investigate Burman’s murder and several other mysterious deaths of people affiliated with the Lannercraig case. They travel to Glasgow to solve the case and maybe deliver some long delayed justice to the perpetrators and their victims. 

The mystery in this book is compelling particularly when Dalton and Gibb arrive in Glasgow and pool their resources with Beattie and Callender. There is a sense that this case needed to be resolved and that its victims suffered tremendous pain and trauma not just from the abuse but the long wait for those who hurt them to seek some form of accountability. 

The detective’s interviews with the former children, now grown up but still hurting, are some of the most emotional passages. We see these characters deal with their trauma in different ways such as one who fell into a criminal life and saw no honest way out of it. Another tried to live as a successful business executive but it’s only a front for a still traumatized child who hasn’t yet come to terms with what happened. The abuse that they endured left painful physical and emotional scars to the point that the Reader hopes that the ones who hurt them and were murdered suffered horribly before their deaths. 

The emotional core is in the murder investigation but the characterization of the investigators leave something to be desired. Dalton and Gibb don't have a lot going for them. There is no discussion of their home lives or any information that makes them distinct. They are both married and one is a father and that's all we know about them. I know Booth probably wanted to move beyond typical detective tropes but that's no reason to make them boring. There really is nothing there about them.

It might just be me, but in reading Journeyman and The Water Doesn't Lie, I learned something. I can live with a book with a weak mystery but strong characters better than I can with a strong mystery but weak characters. Maybe because I look at it this way: anyone could solve the mystery in The Water Doesn’t Lie but not just anyone could solve the one in Journeyman. With Water Doesn’t Lie, one could replace Dalton and Gibb with any other investigators and it would still work just as well. But the mystery in Journeyman needed Vincent Bayonne and Kane Kulpa to solve it. No one else could do it. 

In fact, Water Doesn't Lie itself has a better investigation team in Beattie and Callender. With Beattie, we have the retiree who still wants to see justice done and is still haunted by that which is still unsolved. With Callender, there is the one still on the inside doing his best in a system that he knows is flawed and corrupt. I fantasized what it might have been like if the mystery involved them and not Dalton and Gibb, even perhaps separated by decades with Beattie taking the investigation in 1984 and Callender instead investigating in modern Glasgow. I am left to wonder, “Did they even need to go to Lincolnshire?”

A strong mystery is a great aspect to Water Doesn't Lie but it needs better detectives and more characterization so Dalton and Gibb don't end up as “One Book Wonders.”

Weekly Reader: Murder of a Runaway (A Belfast Murder MysteryBook Five) by Brian O'Hare; Sheehan and Co. Are Back To Top Form In This Mystery Involving Human Trafficking

 

Weekly Reader: Murder of a Runaway (A Belfast Murder Mystery Book Five) by Brian O'Hare; Sheehan and Co. Are Back To Top Form In This Mystery Involving Human Trafficking

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Brian O'Hare's Murder by The Coven took a brief unnecessary trip into the supernatural with a case that involved a Satanic cult and demonic possession. This time with his fifth book, he brings the Belfast Murder Mysteries back to form with the police procedural novel, Murder of a Runaway

While Murder on the Dark Web still remains the gold standard of the entire series with its subversion of good and evil by making the murderer more understandable and even sympathetic than their so-called victims, the Murder of a Runaway is still a great volume in the series. Good and evil are more defined and there are less shades of gray between guilt and innocence. However, it is still a suspenseful piece of work that develops the characters into those who truly need justice and those who provide it.

The body of a young Chinese girl is found. She is identified as Cheung Mingzhu, a scholarship student from Shenzhen University to study at Queen's. Unfortunately, she was seduced and forced to join a human trafficking ring. Alina Balauri, A Romanian woman is similarly forced into prostitution, and plans her escape in alternating chapters with the murder investigation. Meanwhile, there's a mysterious character called The Shadow who oversees all of this and is someone that you don't want to cross.

One of the more interesting aspects to this book is how it details the human trafficking process. Alina's chapters and Mingzhu's backstory explain exactly how people are brought into this system of buying and selling human beings. Sometimes it's not just a simple process of avoiding strangers or turning down what appears to be a shady job request.

The recruiters are often very charming and know how to play on their target's weaknesses such as low self esteem or familial poverty. They promise the person a job or a trip with them and the next thing that person knows they are in another country, forced into hard physical labor or sex work, deprived of their passport, abused and isolated from all contacts except their handlers. According to statistics the average age of a trafficking victim is 27 years old and often fall between 19 and 33. Some are as young as 11 to 14 years. Not to mention the children born to trafficked victims creating another generation that is being exploited. It's a terrible world.

Despite Murder of a Runaway being a fictional novel, it is very realistic on how this problem is portrayed and how it affects those who are caught up in that world.

Thankfully as terrible as the trafficking world is written, there are people like Sheehan and his team that fight it. As I mentioned before, these are the type of police officers that you wish would exist in real life, but don't always. They are good people who are truly protective of the innocent and immerse themselves fully in a case until it is solved and the guilty are punished.

The stand out is Andrew Jones, a coroner who between this and Murder by the Coven seems to be gaining a reputation as the Team Romantic. In both books, he becomes involved with a woman who plays an integral part of the investigation. In this book, he gets some cute moments where he dates Mingzhu's friend, Lin.

Often the side plot romance in a mystery ends badly or is a distraction from the main plot. But here there is enough charm between the couple, that this Reader couldn't help but hope that their relationship continues into future volumes.

Murder of a Runaway is not as good as Murder on the Dark Web but is miles better than Murder by the Coven. That is a marked improvement.

New Book Alert: The Paraclete by Bernard Leo Remakus, M.D.; Disturbing Thriller About The Dark Side of the Catholic Church

 

New Book Alert: The Paraclete by Bernard Leo Remakus, M.D.; Disturbing Thriller About The Dark Side of the Catholic Church

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: When it comes to sex scandals, the Roman Catholic Church has a lot to answer for. Not just for individual priests who molested patrons, both male and female, but also the Vatican's zero response to the cases. Instead of forcing the priest to resign or press charges against them, many Archbishops often simply moved them to another diocese to continue their foul deeds elsewhere or sent them to an "undisclosed location for a time for rehabilitation." 

 Someone that I know works across from such an undisclosed facility. It is remote, on a dirt road, in a rural area, and is not a safe area to be because of how far it is from local authorities. I worry about this person for that and reasons concerning their job but I digress. (For protection's sake, I will not reveal my contact's name, relation, nor where this facility is located.)

There have been some improvements in the situation. I suppose when enough people come forward with the same experiences, even the Pope has to pay attention. Recently Pope Francis has changed Vatican laws to explicitly criminalize sexual abuse. But for many survivors, the damage has already been done and accusations are still made. Is the Vatican's tougher approach working or are these priests being more secretive about it? It remains to be seen.

One novel that explores the Catholic Church sex scandals is The Paraclete by Bernard Leo Remakus, M.D. Like any good crime novel, it shows no matter how high up that you think you are, no matter how right you claim that you are with God, if you commit a heinous crime you will be caught and exposed.

The protagonist is Father Paul Thielemans, who is considered a "Rock Star" in the world of modern Catholicism. He is from a prominent family that made their money by distributing Belgian based beer but he entered the church upon adulthood. He is known for his lectures and best selling books. He is also not afraid to confront controversial topics like "Should the church allow priests to marry?" In many circles, he is famous and just as equally infamous.

While in San Diego, he makes the acquaintance of Bobby Kucera, an introverted altar boy and runs afoul with Father Kitterick, a sinister and rude priest. On a sea voyage to Hawaii for a lecture, Thielemans discovers that his concerns about Bobby and suspicions towards Kitterick were correct when he learns that Bobby committed suicide after having been molested by the priest.

Thielemans also meets Sister Michelle Erzengel, a nun whom he hires as his assistant. He learns that Michelle is part of a secret network dedicated to capturing and exposing priests for sex crimes. Thielemans also learns that Michelle herself has prior experience with priests who refused to keep their hands to themselves.

The Paraclete is one of those kinds of thrillers and mysteries that subverts our notions of guilt and innocence, right and wrong, black and white. Just like Thielemans does in his research, the book itself is not afraid to ask tough questions like if one knows that a crime is being committed is it their duty to report it without evidence? How long can one hide their horrible deeds under a God fearing facade? If the authorities won't do something about a crime what else can be done? If a priest hears of a crime in confession should they turn the perpetrator in? What sins can be forgiven and what cannot? Is confession enough or does true repentance involve a change in actions? There are no easy answers and The Paraclete does not give them.

Instead what the Paraclete does is give us decisions that the characters make based on their own experiences and proximity to these situations. Some characters do horrible things and are never held accountable for them. Instead they are left to their own devices and continue those crimes because their society is insulated and allows them to continue. Even worse, they carry these deeds to another generation by turning a blind eye or taking active part in the deplorable actions that the younger generation does.

Many of the characters in the Paraclete, particularly Thielemans and Sister Michelle are faced with these moral conundrums because of priests getting away with molesting parishioners and the silence of the Church itself that allowed the crimes to continue.

Michelle and her organization prefer to take a more active role in finding and persecuting these men so they can never hurt anyone else. While Thielemans takes a more theoretical cerebral approach to this situation, he too is appalled by the hypocrisy that many of his fellow priests have when they honor God with one hand while raping a male or female parishioner with the other. 

He is disgusted not only with their actions but those of the bishops, archbishops, and cardinals who allow it to happen.

Illegal, unethical, and immoral deeds can only be caught when higher ups let go of their apathy and no longer fear the repercussions or their personal loss. 

To paraphrase the famous quote attributed to Edmund Burke "Evil only thrives when good people do nothing."

Unfortunately, sometimes when the answer is to do nothing, some like the characters in The Paraclete, do something and that something isn't always right. However, in some cases it may be the only way for that evil to end.

The Paraclete is a thought provoking thriller that through its characters asks some tough questions about sexuality, morality, legality, and faith. It is a novel that leaves the Reader in suspense but also to form their own conclusions.

Weekly Reader: The Arboretum After Midnight by W.T. O'Brien; Murder Victim Steals The Murder Mystery After Death

 Weekly Reader: The Arboretum After Midnight by W.T. O'Brien; Murder Victim Steals The Murder Mystery After Death

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: With Murder Mysteries, sometimes there are specific parts that take the Reader's focus. Sometimes, it's the lead detective. The Reader is interested in their personal struggles as well as their investigative process. Sometimes it's the setting. The location and time period are so detailed that the mystery can't be set anywhere. Sometimes, like in the case of W.T. O'Brien's Aboretum After Midnight, it's the murder victim that is the most interesting part.

In the case of Arboretum, the murder victim is Whitney Colliers, personal assistant to interior decorator, Lorian Piaff. Beautiful but domineering, she takes charge of any project including roughshod over Max, Lorian's employee and who bears conflicted feelings over Whitney's sexy appearance but high handed demeanor. Lorian is practically dependent on Whitney's insights so she is well regarded in business but not so much personally. Then after a party, she is found dead in a park with her body fallen on the ground and her head smashed open by a brick.

Detectives Roscoe Romar and Peter Seagram investigate Whitney's mysterious death. They uncover deeper secrets in the deceased woman's life including an unhappy childhood, many lovers, and several enemies. The more that the detectives and others search into Whitney's past, the more that they learn what a complex troubled woman that she really was.

 Much like Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks or Rebecca DeWinter in Daphne DuMaurier's novel Rebecca, Whitney leaves quite an impression even after her untimely demise. In fact, she is made a more intriguing character the more other characters find out about her than if she were still alive and able to defend herself. Roman and Seagram, as well as Whitney's colleagues uncover layers and layers of Whitney's past and personality. These discoveries reveal a fundamental truth. We never really know the people that we are often in contact with until after death and even then maybe only a third of it comes to light if they died under mysterious circumstances.

Whitney's story is filled with contradictions that cause those layers to be opened. She was arguing with another woman at a party the night before she died. The fight was about to erupt into a catfight but about what? Were they fighting over a man? Was the argument work related? Were they a couple? Was she more than work colleagues with Max or Lorian or both? Who were her lovers anyway? 

What about Whitney's estranged mother and her background? Did her family escape from Cold War Eastern Europe and if so what was the price for their trip to freedom and what did Whitney (or her mother) provide to obtain it? Each question leads to more questions about Whitney's character and the circumstances surrounding her death. What is the huge takeaway in this book is how the facts towards Whitney's life as told by others are altered by their interpretation of her: innocent victim, ambitious businesswoman, seductive siren, troubled soul and or all of the above.

The Arboretum After Midnight shows that sometimes with murder mysteries, the loudest voice heard is that of the murder victim.

Weekly Reader: Mistress Suffragette by Diana Forbes; Fascinating Character Study of A Gilded Age Woman Turned Suffragist

 Weekly Reader: Mistress Suffragette by Diana Forbes; Fascinating Character Study of A Gilded Age Woman Turned Suffragist

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Mistress Suffragette by Diana Forbes is a historical fiction and brilliant character study about a young woman from a traditional Gilded Age family turned into a suffragist. Forbes explains exactly why many women turned to the suffrage movement because of societal pressures and unjust laws that treated them as second class citizens who lived without freedom of choice.

In 1893, Penelope Stanton is facing an arranged marriage forced by her parents. Her family was fabulously wealthy now they are facing potential genteel poverty because of the Financial Panic. Since they have two daughters, Penelope and her narcissistic sister, Lydia, Mr. and Mrs. Stanton force marriageable aged Penelope to search for eligible bachelors, so she can marry wealth and the family can move back up in status. 

Lydia looks forward to all of the handsome male attention but Penelope is not nearly as thrilled. As Penelope points out, she attends balls with all the excitement of someone with a gun pointed to their head. She feels less like a person to her parents and more like a piece of valuable jewelry that they want to pawn off to someone else. Her parents are practically pimping their daughters out in front of Newport, Rhode Island's most eligible bachelors.

 While Lydia is content to be married to a much older man, Penelope is raped by the already married businessman, Edgar Daggers. If she can't get married, her parents want to send her to work so they can help themselves to her earnings.

The Daggers want to hire Penelope as a secretary or governess for their future child which ensures that Penelope will never be safe from Edgar's leering eyes and wandering hands. However, her mother still encourages her union with Edgar reminding Penelope that "marriages don't last as long as they used to," even implying that she would still get a decent sum as an undeclared mistress.

It's a world of artifice, superficiality, and greed that Penelope's parents and Edgar are a part of and in which they want to sell their daughters. Penelope is screaming to get out and feels that no one is listening. It's no wonder that instead of accompanying The Daggers to New York, Penelope decides instead to move to Boston with her friend Lucinda to join the Suffrage Movement. Well Lucinda wants to join. Penelope is not quite sure yet.

When Penelope first arrives in Boston, she is confused by many of the suffragist's arguments, particularly about dress. She never thought about wearing a corset and assumed all women wore them. However, she sees Verdana Jones, a speaker and leader for the Movement, with her hair cut short and wearing bloomers and for the first time questions women's dress. Even though Penelope continues to wear a corset and traditional women's clothing through most of the book, the fact that she considers this question at all reveals her as someone who is beginning to look at women's roles more critically and objectively. She is even invited to speak at her first meeting in defense of corsets providing "structure and stability in a world about to unravel."

Penelope is hired by Verdana to recruit members and speak at conventions. Once she gains her voice, she becomes a vocal advocate for the suffrage movement.  

While navigating her way through the Suffrage Movement, Penelope meets a bevy of characters many of which are passionate about their causes: Her friend Lucinda becomes a card carrying feminist from the time they move in; Verdana provokes and amuses Penelope with her bisexuality, openly flirtatious manner, and militant outspokenness, Sam, Penelope's fifth cousin and ex fiance, is open enough to women's rights to become engaged to the very pushy Verdana; Stone Aldrich is an artist and illustrator whose realistic art depicts the reality of poverty in the cities like prostitutes, street kids, and trash cans; Amy Adams Van Buren Buchanan is a wealthy heiress who puts her money to good use by speaking out about important causes. These characters allow Penelope to view the world differently as she grows to admire their independent spirits.

Penelope's personal involvement increases when she experiences for herself the hold that society allows men to have over women. She and her colleagues are threatened by a neighbor and when the police won't do anything about it, she has to order him to leave them alone herself. Edgar continues to pester her and while he feigns support for the suffragists and gives Penelope a useful tip about Stone, who almost becomes Penelope's lover, , it is still clear that Edgar lusts after her and wants to keep her as his mistress. Later when Penelope returns to her family home in Newport, she realizes that her future brother in law uses duplicitous means to claim ownership over the family home. 

When the actions of men affect Penelope personally, she understands, truly understands, what the other suffragists were fighting for. Not just to wear comfortable dress without getting harassed. Not only for the vote. Not solely for legal rights to divorce, own property, or to have financial freedom. They are fighting for complete independence, the ability to choose their lives without conforming to some standard set by men. This realization turns Penelope into a dedicated member of the movement and allows her to change her own life.

Mistress Suffragette is a wonderful book about a woman who finally finds her own voice by speaking out for other women.

Weekly Reader: Ugly Girl, Sweet Nectar: Based on A True Story by D.D. Kaye; Sad and Moving Book About The Scars Left By Child Abuse

 

Weekly Reader: Ugly Girl, Sweet Nectar: Based on A True Story by D.D. Kaye; Sad and Moving Book About The Scars Left By Child Abuse

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: D.D. Kaye's Ugly Girl Sweet Nectar is a powerful book about child abuse and how those emotional scars resonate into adulthood, making the later years ones of hardship, fear, mental illness, and self-esteem issues.

The book is about Alessa, a woman who is going through massive stress in her life. Though unmarried, she has had three daughters from three different fathers. Right now she is constantly arguing with her youngest whom she describes as an "Angster"(a portmanteau for angsty teenager). She has a much younger boyfriend but is insecure about her relationship with him. She is unemployed and broke. Both of her parents are going through health crises. Her father is ill and in the grips of his controlling and manipulative second wife. Her mother has dementia and is living with the aftereffects of a life of alcoholism. To cope with all of this, Alessa has decided to do what she does best: write about her problems to find out how she got to this situation and what went wrong. 

Most of the book consists of Alessa's current struggles with her children, lack of employment or finances, relationships, and parents and is interspersed with flashbacks of her unhappy childhood and teen years. Kaye writes this so the Reader understands where Alessa  came from and why her current life is the way it is.

 We get a sense that the flashbacks provide commentaries about what's going on in Alessa's life now. For example, Alessa goes through her morning arguing with her youngest daughter, Brooke, who would rather stay home with scabbed sunburned lips than be seen in public. Alessa is also remembering her last boyfriend who dated her for a few months until he updated his dating profile to "seeking a slender girl with a flat stomach" and is beginning to date Arman, who is almost 20 years her junior.

Alessa then recalls how her parents' marriage was once happy with a quiet mother who had an Audrey Hepburn look and a modish style and a handsome father who was very cheerful and swung his daughters around when he returned home from his office job. Alessa remembers the rare good times that she had as a child before her parent's marriage fell apart.

As Alessa's current life spirals out of control so do her memories. Alessais is laid off as a computer programmer in an "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" decision. ("You're kidding right?" She says to her boss about the process and the fact that even though a man who has never headed any projects and isn't educated in project management like she is, is not only remaining but is promoted to manager.)

During this time, Alessa  flashes back to her parents divorce when she had to take a maternal role towards her younger sister, Lilla while her father worked three jobs to support his daughters and pay for his ex wife's spending habits. The sisters hovered between their father's home in Washington State and their mother's home in Hawaii. Their more liberal mother drank, took Valium, threw wild parties, and mocked Alessa's personality and appearance. 

Some of the darker aspects in the flashbacks involve Alessa's parents' subsequent romances. Pam, their Dad's much younger girlfriend and later second wife goes from being an understanding sympathetic pal to a controlling manipulative shrew in a matter of a few paragraphs. She puts Cinderella and Snow White's stepmothers to shame as she dominates and verbally abuses their father, isolates him from his daughters by spreading lies, keeps to her room while the girls do all the chores, and withholds his money for herself. As they age, Pam focuses on her lesser aches and pains as his health deteriorates. Alessa and Lilla can only watch in dismay as their father, once a loving strong willed man is reduced to a shell of his former self. 

The picture becomes clear when we see their father as an old man dying of an advanced stage of leukemia and Pam sends him to a nursing home citing a sore foot and spending time in a wheelchair as reasons not to care for him. (In actuality, it would ruin her narcissistic ego to care for someone else other than herself.) I don't blame Alessa for wanting to punch Pam. I wouldn't mind reaching through my Kindle to take a few hits at her myself.

They don't have it any better at their mother's home with her string of boyfriends and frequent drunken episodes.These men are absolutely horrible but at least once they are out of Alessa's mother's life, they are gone. Unlike Pam who stays and stays.

 One, Big Manu, sexually assaults Alessa and reads The Joy of Sex out loud to then 7 year old, Lilla. When Alessa tells her mother about the near rape, Mom sides with Manu and tells her that this type of thing will happen all the time. 

Another boyfriend, Lou, practically keeps the girls and their mother captive in a cabin in Arizona. They only managed to be rescued when a thunderstorm knocked the power out and rangers checked on their status. Alessa's mother begged for her and her daughters  to be rescued.

 That moment and a subsequent chapter when their mother braves a dust devil to drive her daughters to safety are the final moments of self sacrifice. Alessa and Lilla's later years with their mother consist of more frequent alcoholism and Valium and further mental decline to the point that she requires caregivers. In a haunting conversation, Alessa's mother delusionally believes that she is in prison and asks if it's because Alessa still hates her for being a bad mother. Alessa cannot find a way to  answer.

These scars become more fleshed as Alessa matures. Her relationships with her daughter's fathers all ended badly partly because none of them wanted to stay with her. One wanted to continue partying, another became controlling and abusive, and the third was Christian and found Alessa's New Age beliefs to be "too occultic." (even though she cited them as giving her the strength to get her through her unhappy youth.) Looking at her relationships with them and comparing them to her parents, she realizes that she didn't want to follow the same patterns that they did. She wanted to end a relationship that wasn't working rather than be miserable and make her daughters miserable as well.

Even when things seem to go well in her current life, the rug pulls out and Alessa is left unhappy. She is no sooner happy with Arman than she sees pictures on his Facebook wall of him with scantily clad young women. She becomes closer to her older daughters, Emma and Willow but that's because they move back in to help their unemployed mother with the cost of rent. She has a male friend, Kristofer, whom she might want to pursue more than a friendship but he doesn't "want to ruin what they have" and uses Alessa only as a rebound or a shoulder when his romances fizzle out. However, he is a constant steady presence in her life and a good friend.

To keep her sanity, Alessa not only is writing out her problems but looks for signs from the Universe. During the book, she sees two different psychics and they both help her find light inside the darkness. Alessa meditates, exercises, and finds common signs and symbols that surround her. These things help center and remind her that the Universe still loves her. Even if her life is falling apart, she allows herself chances to grieve but also chances to be more open and accepting of the inward. Her spiritual path reminds her that everything will be okay and gives her the love and acceptance that her parents never did. 

Writing the book allows Alessa to look for those signs from the Universe and recognize the patterns in her life. She realized that her parents' unhappiness led to her own. She became excessively

cautious and terrified of men and became overprotective of her daughters to make up for the mother that she didn't have. These realizations plus a final revelation about her mother's youth finally gives her a chance to exorcise the ghosts that have long haunted her and to make peace with her dying parents. 

Alessa's writing about her past is not a quick fix. The ending makes it clear that there are still tears, criticisms, periods of anger and rage at the Universe, her parents and others, and low self-esteem. However, she will also have periods of support and love from friends and family, self-encouragement, and understanding towards herself. 

D.D. Kaye writes lovingly about a woman who reviews the ugliness in her life before she recognizes her own beauty.

Classics Corner: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; An Insightful Look Inside One Year of a High-School Boy

Classics Corner: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; An Insightful Look Inside One Year of A High-School Boy

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is not a big plot-filled novel. Instead it is filled with different various incidents which contribute to the characterization of an introverted teen and his complicated relationships with family, friends, and girlfriends.

Charlie writes letters to an unnamed ”Friend.” The Friend is never revealed and there are even implications that he doesn't exist. Instead the letters give Charlie a chance to unload his deepest emotions and confused thoughts about the world around him.

Most of Charlie's entries consist of his friendship with Patrick and Sam, a quirky brother and sister who welcome Charlie with open arms and encourage him to be more outgoing. He is still grieving over the suicide of a friend and has a hard time relating to people but Patrick and Sam help bring him out of his shell.

With Patrick and Sam, Charlie embraces new things like driving down tunneled bridges while listening to classic rock. (In a terrific passage, Charlie does this and remembers how he “felt infinite.”) They also love to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Charlie at first feels out of place with the crazy costumes, bizarre audience participation, and Patrick’s portrayal of Frank N’Furter and Sam's as Janet. But he eventually adapts and becomes a proud “Time Warp”er.

He also gets involved in his friends’ complicated love lives and that bleeds into his own. He discovers that Patrick is gay when he catches him in an embrace with Brad, a closeted football player. Patrick and Brad’s relationship is hidden until Brad’s abusive father finds out. Brad, in an attempt to push Patrick away, joins in a bullying incident that puts Patrick in the hospital.

Sam and Charlie also have relationship issues. Over the course of the book they date other people but begin to realize they feel that they are more than friends. This moment climaxes when Charlie goes to a party with Sam, her boyfriend, Craig and his current girlfriend, Mary Elizabeth. During an intense time of drinking, drugs, and game of Truth or Dare, Charlie is dared to kiss the prettiest girl at the party and he kisses….Sam. Needless to say his relationship with Mary Elizabeth does not last.

There are also other characters who help shape Charlie’s coming of age journey. There's Bill, Charlie's English teacher who recommends novels for the teen to read like Camus’ The Stranger and Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. Charlie also does extra credit essays on what he reads to share that love of literature with Bill finding a kindred spirit in his teacher.

There's Charlie's sister who is involved in an abusive relationship. When Charlie accidentally reveals this, she becomes furious with her kid brother and continues her relationship in secret.

Then there's Aunt Helen, Charlie's favorite relative. She is long dead but she still remains a part of Charlie's life. She haunts his memories as he remembers her death in a car accident on her way to get him a birthday gift. He also remembers that she had some difficult unspoken incidents in her past that caused her to withdraw from others except Charlie. Opening up his feelings for Aunt Helen reveal some of Charlie's current difficulties with relationships.

There is one revelation about Aunt Helen which is brilliantly foreshadowed and leads to a definite change in Charlie's behavior and relationships. However, for an important plot point, it’s placement in the second to the last chapter make the revelation and aftermath a little rushed. It would have served better to be in the middle of the story where the aftermath would be central to Charlie's development.

However, The Perks of Being A Wallflower is one of the best examples of the life of a teenage boy and the complexities that go into those years when we are still trying to figure out who we are and who we are going to become.