Mail on Sunday

The book was first published in the UK by Orion Media in the year 2000, and has subsequently been published in 33 different languages. The book has made money. It's a best seller, although the alarm bells that started to ring when I began my journey through the book, continued to such an extent that I am drawn towards writing what I think of a bestseller nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

From the initial pages of the book, the writing style of this author or in fact the woman that was claimed to have edited it (and who incidentally was romantically involved with Dave Pelzer at the time), seemed at best amateur, although as stated, it was supposed to be written as if being the thoughts of the child. What began to worry me within the pages of the book was that whilst the story was about a middle class family in California in the 1970's, with five sons, there was little mention of Dave's father or his brothers. This struck me as bizarre since I grew up in a family of similar size, and although had issues with my mother, would still recall interactions between myself and my sisters in memories, whilst Dave did not. It was almost as if they were shadows on the wall, rather than participants in his childhood, and the picture that the author was painting was almost like an oil painting of scenery with no background.

In the chapters that follow, the reader is expected to believe that this perfect "role model" mother turned into a monster that chose to abuse one of her sons and how the story fails to convince is in that it tells one story from one angle, forgetting all other perspectives, puts aside logical thinking and reason, and expects the reader to accept without question that what is being said is true. The torture that the child is put through in the book makes very little sense to me. Yes, of course, a mother can favour one child over the others, and this often happens, though can a mother also single out one child to abuse, and be a loving mother to her other children and to the outside world ? Personally, I have my doubts. There are many instances within the book that are shocking, so shocking that several times, I had to distance myself from the story in order to gain perspective, because what I was reading made no sense. There are contradictions galore throughout the story, such as the descriptions of his mothers' obsession to starve the child, weighed against his own description in a miserable and almost "sorry for myself" description of his lunch pail always having the same contents.

The book made me research, made me ask questions to fill in the gaps that were so glaringly obvious and it seems that the story was only published after the death of his mother in January 1992, by which time his father had also died. I also questioned why members of the family had never contested the contents of the book, although here found that many had dismissed it as folly and that his own Grandmother (accused of abuse of his mother and one of the weak arguments for why Dave's mother became abusive in the first place) stated that Dave's book belongs in the fiction section.

Taken a step further, none of his brothers comment upon the contents of the book, and although there is a small chapter where quotes were made by Dave's teacher at the end of this book, the teacher stays "neutral" and says that the story is Dave's to tell, and that back in those days very little was known about the existence of child abuse. This was a retrospective comment made on an event that was scaled as enormously important, though the response given by the teacher who had been contacted by the editor of this book was scathingly careful to say the least.

All the way through this disturbing read, there are constant contradictions, and I believe "selected" memories, put together in an attempt to shock, though to what purpose ? In some respects, if Dave were as badly abused as he says he was, perhaps the book was his way of coming to terms with what had happened, though personally I doubt it. The book has made the man rich, and the two books that followed and made the trilogy of "A Boy Called It", "The Lost Boy", and "A Man Named Dave" seem too commercially contrived as a money spinner to have served any useful purpose in the way that child abuse is dealt with, and I can only believe that the bitterness and pain shown as incomplete pictures within this book, owe their incompleteness to the perceptions of a mind tortured by memories that somehow still do not make sufficient sense to complete the picture, even to him.

Readability : Poor and unconvincing.
Buy it : No, borrow it, but read with an open mind.
Not suitable material for young children.