The Other Side: A Memoir
Bad things have happened to Johnson, and she replays them here, sometimes in chronological order, sometimes not. She has lived through a lot—poor choices, wretched boyfriends and unsuitable husbands, pills, therapists—but mainly, kidnapping and rape by a man she once loved. Still, she persists. The men she engages with are not given names but titles (My Handsome Friend, The Man I Live With, My First Husband). So, too, is her family distantly identified (My Older Sister, etc.). Johnson focuses on how she felt, what happened, and what she saw. This is a grim, years-long ride as Johnson details her choices, her loss of feeling and initiative, her troubled dreams, her relentless acceptance of physical and sexual abuse, even as she works her way to graduate school. She has a story to tell, but the best question of the book, posed by her grandmother to My Boyfriend, is, Now tell me: what kind of man are you? It remains unanswered as Johnson moves back to the kidnapping, now 4 years past, now 13 years past. Johnson asks, Am I not endlessly circling? She is, but her obsessive, aloof, yet graphic self-portrait still aims for catharsis. --Eloise Kinney