A well-written, but unrelievedly depressing, chronicle of a little girl's grooming and sexual exploitation from the age of eight to her nearly suicidal twenties.There are numerous books, both novels and nonfiction, that can help young people who have been the victims of such abuse. Alas, this is not one of those books.

Not recommended. ( )

Quite a compelling read where the author goes back to her seven year old self- when she and her mother first met the seemingly affable Peter at a swimming pool.
Margaux was the only child of a well-meaning but mentally ill mother - in and out of hospital. Her father could be scary, critical and a drinker.
When Peter - living with a woman with two teenagers- welcomed mother and daughter into his home, frequently, it seemed at first a magical place. Indulged, with pets, trips out, kindness....only gradually did Peter want something in return.
I thought one of the strongest aspects to it was the changing picture we got of Peter as Marghaux matured and started to see him - somewhat- for what he was. The kindly, wonderful adult slowly morphs into an unpleasing old-for-his age loser... ( )

Uncomfortable and disturbing memoir of child abuse. ( )

Margaux met Peter at a neighborhood swimming pool; they played together and became friends. He was 51 and she was seven. Margaux's father was critical and controlling and her mother, who had mental problems, was happy to take her to Peter's house for visits so she could get away from her husband. She had no idea that things became physical between them when Margaux was nine. Their relationship lasted for years, until Peter's suicide. This is a memoir of it. It's complicated, interesting, moving.

As she got older she became almost completely isolated from people her age, spending all her time with Peter, alienated from her father who had made it clear she was a disappointment and from her mother who was in and out of mental hospitals. He was the only person who cared about her. But when she was interested in having a boyfriend he was pouty and unhappy. The balance switched so that she had the power to stay in their private world or break out.

Throughout, she doesn't ask for vindication or revenge or even sympathy, just shows us her feelings. I respect that. The latter parts were hard for me because of resonances in my own but I have nothing but respect for her writing. ( )

Many editorial reviews of this memoir are quite critical of it, saying that it fails to convey a lesson and that it does not condemn as harshly as it should. Some even go so far as to compliment her style, while derisively claiming that she's been made schizophrenic by the abuse and that this is reflected in the work. To use Fragoso's mother's mental illness as a slight against her and her writing is low enough, but it also misses the point of the work. She attempts, bravely, to convey the psychology of her abuser, to show and not tell us how Peter manipulated and deceived her and everyone around them in order to prolong and intensify, his sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse of her from the time she was eight to the time she was, incredibly, twenty two. Similarly, she puts us in the minds of her various selves through these ages, as she grew up through this ongoing abuse. She takes us through her own journey, and that is perhaps harder for a reader to deal with than to be constantly reminded by the present voice of the realizations and truths that are held by the survivor.

A reader wants to be assured that an abuse survivor has triumphed, rather than inhabit how they felt before that triumph. Fragoso has written a memoir that through its subtly woven narrative demands empathy rather than sympathy, that asks for recognition rather than pity. That makes this a difficult book to read, and one could only imagine then how difficult it was to write, to inhabit the horror of your past and turn it into poetry that is literary, lyrical, and unflinching. ( )