Merle

This is a great memoir and family saga, and an intense one. At the center of it is the author’s relationship with her troubled father, but in writing that story she weaves together many strands of personal and family history, going back to her great-great-grandmother in Mexico. A journalist by training, the author investigates many possibilities for her father’s afflictions; he has a drug problem for many years and suffers from bouts of what is probably drug-induced psychosis, but she also investigates the possibility that he is actually the victim of CIA mind-control experiments (declassified documents show that they’ve done experiments like this in the past, so it isn’t as crazy as it sounds), or that he has special spiritual powers (as a Mexican cousin believes).

Whatever the cause, there’s certainly a family history of trauma that echoes back through several generations. And so it’s a fascinating, vivid story, but also a dark one; whatever you find upsetting or scary, it’s probably in here. And there’s an overriding lack of safety that makes it a disturbing book, an effect probably heightened by the author’s staccato writing style. But it’s terribly compelling, full of incident and full of life. And full of a wide range of literary references; the author understands her life and her father’s through the prism of all sorts of literature, from Moby Dick to the Sword of Truth to the Popul Vuh. But I think what really stands out is the author’s ability to articulate and bring home not only her own experiences, but her mother’s, father’s, and grandmother’s. There’s no distance here; the reader is transported right into the experiences of the author and her family. In any event, it’s an excellent book, and one I highly recommend.