Nonfiction Book Reviews

When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase is, by far, the most unusual book I have ever read.  It was recommended to me by Stephanie of Rocket Scientist as a good book to read if interested in multiple personalities.

I have to say, I haven’t ever read or watched anything about multiple personalities before, so I started this book with a clean slate.  Even so, this book blew me away.  I don’t even know where to start.  I guess the general outline of the book would be as good as any…

Truddi Chase was two years old when her mother left her father, and moved in with her stepfather.  This turned out to be a Very Bad Thing in Truddi’s life, because the stepfather was the biggest slimebag to ever walk the earth.  He raped Truddi, at age two.  The sexual abuse continued unabated until her teenage years, when her mother finally, finally, threw the guy out.

On top of that, Truddi was also subjected to emotional and physical abuse by both her mother and her stepfather.  Her mother knew what the stepfather was doing to her daughter, but instead of defending her daughter, she blamed the daughter for all of it, saying that she was a “dirty” person, and that it was all her fault that this was happening to her.  There were also step-siblings in the picture who were also being abused, although Truddi doesn’t focus on that very much.

There is much, much more to the emotional, sexual, and physical abuse than what I’m stating above, but it was hard enough to read the first time around - I don’t think I can bring myself to type it out.  The bottomline is, the overwhelming pain and degradation was so extreme, Truddi’s mind formed other personalities in order to deal with it all.

There are several things that are fairly common when someone has multiple personalities:

First, the core personality is the one that was present at birth, and that personality is still around and available.

Second, most counselors try to help the personalities reintegrate into one, so that there is only one person left inside of the body.

Neither of those statements are true in Truddi’s case.  When she was raped by her stepfather at age two, her core personality died, and her multiple personalities were born.  Two core personalities came into being: One that was the child personality, and one that eventually became the adult personality.  On top of those two came 90+ other personalities, all of them serving their own functions in support of Truddi.  Some personalities died, and only an echo of them was left.

Sound confusing?  Oh yeah.  This was a mind-bending book.  The multiple personalities called themselves as a whole “the Troops,” and it was the Troops who actually wrote the book.  If you look at the front cover, it says, “The Troops for Truddi Chase” as the author.

When the counselor talked to Truddi, he could see differences in her as he spoke to her, depending on which personality was controlling her.  She was tested, and there were measurable differences in speech pattern, brain wave activity, intelligence level, handwriting, posture, voice, etc, depending on the personality.  Even her eye color and cheekbone structure changed.

Get this: Some of the personalities had allergies, so during allergy season, they couldn’t come out front and be in control, because then Truddie would have been miserable.  Oh, and when one personality was in control, Truddi tested positive for pregnancy.  As soon as another personality took over, the pregnancy disappeared.

It was a mind-blowing book.  I had absolutely no idea any of this existed.  And because the book was written by the Troops, you got to see all of this from their perspective - talking to each other, talking to the counselor, doing the day-to-day tasks required to live.

I think one of the hardest things to understand was how utterly difficult this was for the woman.  The Troops created a personality that knew nothing of any abuse, so she could be the front to the world.  This personality did not think by itself, or have any desires by itself - it only did what the other personalities directed it to, which isn’t something you (or this personality) find out until late in the book.  That part just made my head hurt.

After the book was released, Truddi went on tour - she appeared on Oprah and the Phil Donohue Show.  I tried to find clips online from those appearances, but came up empty handed.  I did find out that a reporter from the Washington Post searched for Truddi’s family, and from there, found out that all of the step-brothers and sisters supported Truddi’s story, and even said that Truddi didn’t reveal all in her book: They said that on top of sexual abuse from the stepfather, she also suffered from sexual abuse from the mother too.

That was never once even hinted at in Rabbit Howls, so I’m guessing Truddi’s personalities suppressed that information very, very deep.  On the other hand (not surprisingly) the stepfather denied everything.  Wow, who saw that coming?

I tried to find follow-up information on Truddi - where is she now, how is she doing, are all of the personalities still there, etc, but came up with zip.  It’s as if she fell off the face of the planet.  If anyone has any information on what happened to her after the finish of the book, I’d love to hear about it.

I don’t know how to rate this book.  As with everything to do with it, I’m at a loss.  So I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: I’m not going to rate it.  I just don’t see how to attach a number to this book.

I will put this out there: Please, please, do not give this to your children or teenagers to read.  This is an extremely difficult book to read in terms of descriptions of different abuse that happened; if it were a movie, it would be rated X.  If language and sexuality bother you, absolutely do not pick this book up.

On the other hand, if you’re wanting to learn more about the multiple personality world, and are not easily offended, you’ll definitely want to read this.  As far as I know, this is the only multiple personality book written by the personalities themselves.  It is a rare glimpse into that world - not a pretty one, not an easy one, but one worth finding out about nonetheless.  It was hard enough for me to read this book - I cannot imagine living it.

Hava

PS If you’re interested in an in-depth look at When Rabbit Howls and multiple personality disorder in general, be sure to check out Trauma, Testimony, and Fictions of Truth: Narrative in When Rabbit Howls. It was an interesting (but long!) article that I thought did justice to the book.

Well, if I ever had any thoughts of using drugs, they’re gone now. Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff has completely cured me of any desire to use any sort of drug, up to and including sleeping pills.

A lot of personal memoirs seem to follow the same basic structure: Poor me, look at my childhood, I had such a hard life.  The End.  It seems like there are so many autobiographies out there that don’t have anything more to offer than that. (Example.  And yeah, this one too.)

And perhaps it’s because I’ve been reading so many autobiographies, one right after another, but whatever the reason, that’s something that has started to get on my nerves.  After all, a tough childhood is something that I would say a fair majority of America has lived through.  Show me how you changed, and grew to be a better person, or something.

Well, Tweak broke all of the “autobiography rules” by:

A) Talking about what a great childhood he had - he really loved his dad and it shows.  There were some difficult things that happened, like his parents getting a nasty divorce and putting him in the middle of it, but overall, it was much better than say, Richard Pelzer’s childhood.  He also doesn’t dwell on the negatives all that much.

B) Nic Sheff has a lot to offer his readers, other than a long story of boo-hoo-is-me, by writing one of the most gritty and realistic views of drug use I think you’ll ever find in print.  If you’re worried about your teenagers using drugs, hand them this book.  If you want to use drugs after reading this book, there’s something really wrong going on.

In Tweak, Nic chronicles almost two years of his life, starting out with Day One, and proceeding from there.  Each day reads like a journal entry - he writes entirely in the present, and by the end, you feel as if you had in fact lived two years of his life.

And what a terrible two years it is.  Day One is found with him starting a bender, where he spends weeks getting high and doing some massive drugs.  He cleans up at one point, and spends over a year clean and sober, which was really good to see, after reading about so much crap.  But then he goes off the deep end again.  *sigh*

This book is rated a solid R, perhaps even something higher than that, because of several huge things:

1) Nic’s mouth (he uses swear words as adjectives regularly);

2) Massive drug use (obviously);

3) And a whole lot of sexual stuff.  Nic does things he’s not proud of, how about that?  I don’t think they’ll nominate him as Man of the Year anytime soon.

There were some really good passages, such as when Nic is talking to his friend/co-drug dealer, and saying that he wants to clean up and get off the drugs:

I tell him I’m thinking about getting clean again.  He tells me it’s a waste of time.
“What is life for, if not for living?”
“Is this living?”
“We’re so free.”
“Sort of.”

And at the beginning of the book, he did think like his drug dealing friend: Using drugs, to him, was freedom.  He didn’t want to listen to anyone else, he wanted to do what he wanted to do, and that was drugs.

Over the course of the book, he starts to realize that using drugs actually takes away your freedom, because you are constantly lying, stealing, and/or prostituting yourself for another hit.  You would sell your mother for a “fat bag” of crack (as he called it - I learned all sorts of drug slang in this book that I’d never heard before and didn’t particularly want to hear, but oh well).  By the end, he’s come to the realization that the only way to be truly free was to be drug free.

This book was raw, dark, and disturbing.  And yet it gave me a small measure of hope that someone who had been so horribly destroyed by drugs could eventually fight his way free of the addiction.

I give Tweak 3.75 out of 5 stars, and add a STRONG parental warning to the book.

Side note: Apparently, the father has written a memoir covering his son’s life, but from his point of view as the dad.  I don’t think I’ll read it, just because Tweak was so depressing/disturbing, but I did think that was interesting.

Hava

Well, one thing I can say about Hard Corps: From Gangster to Marine Hero by Marco Martinez: I was never bored while reading it.  The story is a remarkable one: A boy who grew up in a stable, loving family, but ended up joining a gang anyway on the first day of seventh grade.  Things went downhill really fast from there, and he ended up spending his nights doing drugs, trying to avoid getting shot, stealing from stores, and any other grand schemes he and his buddies could dream up.

Now comes the remarkable part: Marco Martinez’s life turned around when he met his first Marine ever, Staff Sergeant Marquez.  His muscular physique and daunting demeanor made an impression on Marco.  He went home that night and thought about his life and where it was headed.  What was he going to do with his life?  Where was he going to end up?  He didn’t like what he saw, and he decided right then and there to join the military.  He scoped out the different branches, and decided that he too wanted to be a Marine.

I don’t want to tell the whole story, so I’ll just quickly sum it up by saying that after he survived boot camp, he ended up a decorated hero because of his actions in Iraq.  All in all, a very inspiring story.

Having said all that, I have to give some HUGE caveats to recommending this book:

A) Martinez was once a gang member, then became a Marine.  Neither of those lines of work are conducive to clean mouths.  I have never, ever seen so many swear words packed into one book before.  Here’s an excerpt from the book - I have starred out the swear words:

“Is dat **** seeded, Cuz?” Tyrone said while punching De Andrea.
“Who do you think I am, ****?” De Andre said.  “I already **** did that **** last **** night, Cuz!”
Tyrone and De Andre said “Cuz” at the end of every other sentence.
“Hit that **** as hard as you **** can, iiight, Cuz?” De Andre said.
“Iiight.  But we need some music up in this ****,” Tyrone said.  “Put on some Brotha Lynch Hung, Cuz!” Page 17, Hard Corps

Luckily, the whole book doesn’t read that way, or I would have put it down long before the end.  Sometimes Marco even goes a whole page without a swear word, LOL!, and other than dialog between gang members, he uses very little gangster slang.  The book is very easy to read, fast-paced, and interesting - it doesn’t read like Gangster Rap 101 or something.  But still, some of that is in there.

B) Martinez serves in Iraq as a soldier, and he makes absolutely no bones about supporting the war and what’s being done in Iraq.  He also doesn’t make any bones about wanting to kill someone (no, I’m not kidding).  If that kind of thing would be offensive to you, then I suggest you skip this book.

I picked it up originally because a patron came into the library and applied for a card for the sole purpose of checking this book out.  When I asked why it he was so deadset on reading it, he told me that he had served with Marco Martinez in Iraq, and wanted to see what he had said in his book.  Since my father was in the Marine Corps for 20 years and I spent my formative years on military bases, I figured the book would be fun to read.  After I finished it, I passed it on to my father, who, upon giving it back, said, “That was pretty hard core, even for me.  And boy does that kid have a dirty mouth on him!”

If the book were ever made into a movie, I have no doubt that it would be rated R for language and violence. The saving grace for me was his love for this country, and serving his fellow Americans.  He said at one point, “I’ll always regret being a [gangster].  I’ll never regret being given the privilege of becoming a Marine.”  He has a lot of patriotic pride for America, but unlike many of us flag-waving Americans on the 4th of July, he was actually willing to lay down his life to defend America.

Overall, I enjoyed the story line and I enjoyed the author’s style of writing, but I’d still have to give it 3.75 out of 5 stars.  If you’re in the mood for a real “tell it like it is” memoir on the Marine Corps, I don’t think it would get anymore real than this.

Hava

A Brother’s Journey: Surviving a Childhood of Abuse by Richard B Pelzer was a very difficult memoir for me to read.  The abuse described in this book made me sick to my stomach.  I’d read his brother’s memoir, A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer, back in high school and remember crying - sobbing really - because of what happened to him.  Richard’s memoir affected me as deeply as Dave’s had.

If you haven’t read A Child Called It, I would say that’s almost a must before reading Brother.  Richard pretty much just jumps into the story with very little explanation - it’s almost as if it’s a sequel to Child.  Reading them one right after another might be a bit much to stomach, however, because they are both so darn depressing.

For the few people who haven’t heard of A Child Called It or A Brother’s Journey, basically what happened is Dave and Richard grew up in California in the ’70s, and were subjected to intense abuse by their mother. When Dave was a part of the family, he was called It or or sometimes That Boy when someone was feeling nice that day. Eventually, the state came and took Dave away. Once Dave left, Richard became the de facto whipping boy, literally.

The mother was unstable, completely unbalanced mentally, and a horrid drunk to boot. She was regularly wasted by 10 in the morning, and sometimes woke up still drunker than a skunk because of how much alcohol she’d consumed the day before. The father was terrified of his wife, and stayed married to her until the day he died, even though he moved out of the house when Richard was still just a young boy.  The mother is a monster, and that’s the nicest thing I can think of to say about her.

One thing that bothered me about A Brother’s Journey is that the story ends when Richard is only 15 years old. I felt like the author had intentionally cut the story in half (after all, he’s still living with his mother and brothers at this point - there is no Great Escape like there was at the end of Child) in order to write another book and make twice the money on the same story. Sure enough, after finishing this book, I did a Google search and saw that there is a sequel, A Teenager’s Journey. I don’t know if I want to read that one or not.

Overall, this was a hard book to read - I felt physically sick to my stomach during parts of it. I wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars

Hava

Money for Nothing: One Man’s Journey Through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions by Edward Ugel was not about a guy winning the lottery, as I had originally thought it was.  Instead, Mr. Ugel worked in the lump-sum business: Basically, if someone was receiving an annuity payment over the course of 20 years because of winning the lottery, he would buy them out upfront and give a lump settlement to them, all for a fee, of course.  He made very good money, but it was an extremely competitive business and some of the tactics he used to find and sign up lottery winners was, to put it nicely, cutthroat.  He never broke any laws, but he did use some amazing salesmanship to “get ‘er done.”

It’s a fast-paced read - I finished the 235-page novel in just one day - and overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit.  There were several things that detracted from the novel though: First, the author didn’t shy away from using swear words.  If this were a movie, it would be rated PG-13 just for the language.  Yeah, sure, cutthroat salesmen probably weren’t worried about whether their language was clean or not, and I realize that it’s realistic this way, but still, I’m not a fan of swear words, and that did bother me.  Second, the author tended to tell stories within stories, and jump back and forth through time without explaining what he was doing.  The book is not organized chronologically, and he would refer to his wife, then fiancée, then child being born, then suddenly she’s his fiancée again.  I never quite knew where in time we were at.  And he’d also start telling a story, then start another story, go back to the first story, start a third story, then finally finish the first one.  For a speedreader like me, that was hard to keep up with.

It was worth jumping through time though, because the stories were absolutely fascinating.  I kept thinking to myself, “Why aren’t any of these people smart about the money?  Why do they blow through the money so quickly?” And then of course the requisite, “If I won millions in a lottery, I would be smart about it.” Which I believed all the way until I got to the end of the book, where Mr Ugel made the following statement:

“If you were handed a thousand dollars, if you won it out of the blue, what would you do with it? No lying.  Yeah, I’d blow it too.  Now, if you were made to dig a ditch or paint a house, or do any job for a day or two in order to receive that same money, what would you do with it then? Exactly. Me too.  Bills are bills.

“Earned money is more valuable than found money because it is more valued.” Page 207, Money for Nothing

Touché, Mr Ugel.

Anyway, if you don’t mind a PG-13 book because of language and gambling (no sexual scenes, murder, or drugs in it anywhere, just swearing, drinking, and gambling) then you’ll be fine with this book.  And if you’re wanting to know more about the gambling industry, lottery winners, and the lump-sum business, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this book.  I learned some pretty interesting facts, like the idea that lotteries help fund education is a bunch of bull, which took me by surprise because I live in a lottery state and I am constantly watching ads on TV about how lotteries help our schools prosper, blah blah.  Turns out that is a complete lie.  The government, lie about money?  Never.  I know, I know, shocking.

I give Money for Nothing 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Havs