Friday 13 November 2009

TRUE LIFE REVIEW: Crazy Love - Leslie Morgan Steiner

BOOK BLURB:

When Leslie met her husband Conor she felt she’d found the man of her dreams. Smart, attentive and devoted to her, he was all she’d ever hoped for and it wasn’t long before they were married.
But worrying cracks began to appear in this seemingly perfect relationship. For whilst Conor could sometimes make Leslie feel loved and cherished, at other times his abrupt, violent mood swings left her deeply troubled. And as the violence escalated, Leslie felt trapped in a world of terror – a world from which she knew she had to escape.
Harrowing and yet compulsively readable, Crazy Love throws a spotlight on the brutal, hidden world of abuse. As it takes you on a rollercoaster ride through hell, it tells the story of how one woman was forced to confront a painful truth: the man she loved seemed determined to kill her.


REVIEW:

The first book I’ve read on marital over childhood abuse. Which dealt with a young woman who met and later married an older man, who exueded confidence despite the fact that he’d suffered years of abuse himself. What caught my eye about this tale was the fact that in the write up it brought to the fore the question about how you deal with someone who you love yet wants to kill you. So whilst reading the book I was waiting and expecting the moment of violence that would place her into a coma, which in turn, would lead to the husbands incarceration due to attempted murder but all I got was a one off hand comment from a Policeman that said to paraphrase “Staying with these type of people will kill you.”

Now whilst I’m not supporting an abuser’s point of view I do wonder how this book was published to try to educate the reader to events when I read magazines that deal with more horrific true life and attempted murder and that should have been the book that was presented.

This “offering” felt more like a glorification of the author rather than dealing with the issues at large, especially with her own family supporting the husband, which does lead the reader to wonder exactly how accurate the experience was. Or whether it was more a story that she created in her own head to justify why she ended up leaving 17 Magazine. (Which the author tells you about in what feels like five minute periods.)

Alongside this, the author seems to be a well known writer for papers and magazines, has appeared on talk shows as an “expert” which I felt left this book with lack of emotional attachment leaving the reader detached from the words in such as a way that you really did wonder why you should care about her.

Overall I wouldn’t tell anyone to read this book but I would say that there is an opening out there for those with real life experiences of the darker side of marital abuse for both genders. One that will allow a personal tale to be told and one that will bring this hidden world to the fore in such a way that the reader can understand the victim which is what this subject requires.

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