Wstrząsająca historia, co tu dużo mówić. Ilość i rodzaj krzywdy, którą wyrządziła matka autorce niewyobrażalna. Ciężko się ocenia takie książki.

3.75

Książka pełna brudu i okrucieństwa ujęta w narrację nieswiadomego dziecka. Julie świetnie opisuje przebieg tej patologii od strony ofiary. Bardzo często czułam obrzydzenie, ale jednocześnie fascynację. Manipulacja zastosowana przez matkę była na tyle skuteczna, że bohaterka była pod jej wpływem jeszcze wiele lat po ucieczce z rodzinnego domu. Zakończenie obrazuje czytelnikowi cel kryjący się za wydaniem tej książki - zemsta i chęć ocalenia innych.

This is one of those books where I feel a bit guilty for not liking it. All said, it was a relief when I finally finished it. I'm not sure if it was massive caregiver fatigue getting in my way as I work with helping people recover from trauma (though that has never happened before) or if it was some fault of the book. That said, Gregory's life was horrifying and because of that I wanted to like this book more than I did, but I didn't. I know some people are challenging the veracity of Gregory's memoir, and I do want to say some things in Gregory's favor. First, children tend to want to see their parents as good people because they see their parents as extensions of themselves, so for Gregory to have gotten to this point where she would write a book about the horrific abuse that she experienced, well, she must have had good reasons. Second, Gregory never claims to have forgotten the abuse or have recovered memories she lost, which are red flags for false memories. So I tend to believe Gregory.

I think I was expecting more of a focus on Manchusen by Proxy, a condition where a caretaker, usually the mother, fakes medical symptoms in her child to get attention. In some ways this book seemed segmented into two stories, visits to the doctor and then the horrific abuse that happened at home. It's told as it unfolds from Gregory's POV at the age she was when going through her ordeals, with little insight on how she looks at it now from an adult's perspective and or education about how what her mother was doing fits the pattern for MBP. And the result was that it felt rather voyeuristic. And at times Gregory seemed so focused on painting a picture of what was happening that it just got confusing, such as when she spliced the word "car battery" into "car batter" and then breaks to describe how her mother wails "REE" that left me confused and re-reading that sentence over and over trying to figure out what a car batter (I even Googled car batter) is and what a ree is until I put it together. I read a lot, and I have never seen something like that before.

If anything it left me with more questions about MBP, though I could easily map out the abusive dynamics of the family as that is very familiar from an academic standpoint. And in the end I felt it was more of a story of a severely dysfunctional family with MPB on the side, rather than tackling MPB front and center. I guess you could argue how to do one without the other, but there it is.

3.25

Library Biography #37

So, recently I watched the documentary, "Mommy Dead and Dearest" about Munchausen by proxy, which sparked me to want to know more about the disease.

Julie Gregory's memoir was the only book that my local library had - which sort of shocked me to be honest. I picked it up, hoping to learn more about the disease, but this book was really more about Gregory's life as a whole, not specifically about the disease per se.

Gregory's parents both had mental problems, reflected by the inconsistencies and abuse of her childhood. Most of this memoir is a string of bad memories with highlights of Julie's trips to the doctors (the ones she can remember). As Julie begins to find her freedom and realize all the things her parents did to her, especially her mother, she begins to write with an increased type of prose. I found this prose confusing at times and distracting from her story.

I thought the book was interesting and appreciated the novelty of having bits of her medical records printed in the book... although, it almost made me feel that Gregory thought she had to print these to prove to everyone that these crazy things did happen (only because she says that so many people did not believe her).

I am not gonna lie. There were parts of this book when I literally needed to stop reading for a moment to get out from shock and to understand that those things are really happening in the world we're living in.
I was cheering for Julie each time she was trying to overcome the system she was forced to live in and getting sad when she got (again) discarded and misunderstood.
Although I'm really happy for the ending!

This was a hard book to read. It's about the author who was abused. Her mother took her to the doctor's all the time claiming there was something wrong with her and the doctor's found nothing wrong with her. The author is a victim of Muchausen by Proxy.

I couldn't put this book down. What Julie had to go through was a horrible form of child abuse. As a nurse, I was sick to my stomach when I read about the doctors and nurses at Julie's appointments and how they never spoke to Julie or advocated for her. I highly recommend this book. I would like to know what happened afterwards. Did her mother ever get prosecuted for her actions? So many unanswered questions.

I generally steer away from child abuse memoirs - they're not my idea of an entertaining read. But I read all of my holiday books & there were slim pickings on offer in the hotel lobby. Besides, I am mildly intrigued by MBP.
However, this account didn't really address MBP syndrome, more than it did reflect on a terrible emotionally and physically abusive childhood. The writing style was amateurish, disorganised & focused on to many irrelevant details. Sure it was appalling & illustrated why I don't usually read such accounts, but there was not enough detail on the Munchausen angle.
Most importantly, it ended just as it was about to get interesting. Was the mother ever formally diagnosed with MBP? Did Julie confront her? Press charges? And what of the secrets shrouding her grandmother, were they ever revealed?
I hope Julie found it cathartic to write this memoir & that she can overcome some of her resulting issues. But being subjected to such horror does not make you an author.

An interesting personal account of a Munchausen by Proxy survivor.

Bravo, Julie. Bravo.

Really gripping, really horrible. One thing that came into the introduction is that there isn't really a lot of work out there on this subject. (This book came out in 2003.) So even though I have seen it treated in side plots in movies or the main plot of a single hour of television drama, those have been limited exposures. Here, watching it progress, hearing how the child feels about it, is pretty hard. I wanted to take breaks, but also wanted to keep reading.

Also interesting to see things carried across generations. The grandmother had differences and similarities with the mother, and to a lesser extent you also see some things carried down through the father from his father. They are terrible people, but you can also see that terrible things happened to them. They still could have chosen not to do terrible things.