Review: No, Daddy was an awful parent...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 18, 2013
I wasn't overly keen on the tense it was written in.When the author was writing about events that are at best hearsay and by that I do not mean his own memories or experiences but rather events he knows about only via third parties, I would have liked to known the sources.Specifically I am talking about the intrauterine events in relation to his parents actions, especially his mother. How does he know she did those things and who told him? If he was told by a third party then that person was relating them through their own frame of reference.I have to say it is one of the events in the book that I kept going back to, how his mother tried to kill him (the foetus/baby) by throwing herself down the stairs or punching herself in the stomach. The author never states who told him these things and I have to say if it was his father or grandfather then that was pure spite on their part. There are things a person does not need to know. If it was his mother then I would wager the comment that she wasn't trying to kill him 'Adam' because at that point he didn't exist as Adam or as a child. She was trying to get rid of a foetus/baby and not him the person.Reading any autobiographical material that delves into abuse or neglect is always hard and even more so for the person who has written and then published it.What is really evident throughout is that even after all those years all the author really wanted, despite all the neglect and abuse, was for either one of his parents to just want him. To love him unconditionally for the person he is.One of the hardest lessons in life is realising that parents are nothing more than mere mortals and they make mistakes, often lots of them. When a person is capable of stepping away from that vicious cycle of mistakes and makes a conscious decision to not be part of that cycle anymore, that is the first step in the right direction.You can't change the past and you can't change another person, you can only change yourself.Unfortunately we also don't always have to the chance for closure. People die and cheat you of the chance to get that one thing you want the most. The reality is that it probably never would have happened the way you imagine it in your dreams.You can probably tell by the way I am rattling on that the story made some sort of impact on me. I didn't like the tense, it could have been written in a less stocato way but.....The raw emotion is there just beneath the surface. It simmers for a while and then takes a bite now and again. The fact that I could feel his anger, his pain, his disappointment and inevitably his sorrow, is what will make me remember this story, despite the odd thing I didn't like about it.I received a free copy of this book for my review.