Nonfiction Book Reviews

Sleeping with a Stranger: How I Survived Marriage to a Child Molester by Patricia Wiklund was filed in the 921’s section at the library, which for the non-librarians out there, means that it was labeled as an autobiography.  I saw it while doing check-in (of course - that’s happy hour for a bookaholic like me) and thought that it would be along the lines of A Child Called It, where the author would talk about her life in general, and in particular, what happened in her marriage to the child molester.

That was not at all what the book was.  I’m thinking seriously of asking the library to relabel and categorize it, because it shouldn’t be counted as a 921 at all, but instead a self-help book focused on wives whose husbands are child molesters.

Patricia Wiklund talks about what happened in her own marriage in fairly generic details from page 3 - 14 (the first chapter of the book).  The entire rest of the book is spent quoting other women who went through the same thing she did, talking about the different theories of whether a child molester really can be “cured” or not, and how to work through the whole thing if you’re a spouse of a child molester.

Very occasionally, she’d mention something that’d happened in her own life (this would last for a whole paragraph - maybe!) and then she was back to focusing on others.

I don’t think I would have minded this, if I had known that was what this book was going to be about.  Of course in that case, I wouldn’t have picked it up at all, because I’ve never dealt with child molestation on a personal level - I have no reason to learn how to deal with being married to a child molester, obviously.

While reading it, I didn’t know that was what the book was going to be like, and I kept waiting (in vain) for the author to focus on her own story again.  I read to the end (skimming in parts, I’ll admit) and it never happened.  It was a self-help book, focused on the spouses of child molesters.  Period.

If this is something that you are personally dealing with, then I’d highly recommend this book to you.  I think you’ll find it invaluable, because I don’t personally know of other books focused on this same subject - this is a pretty specialized subject.

Otherwise, I’d skip the book.  There’s not much to interest someone who isn’t dealing with this issue themselves.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

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