No comments about The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography).

1 comments about Jung's Circle of Women: The Valkyries (Jung on the Hudson Books).

1. It isn't often that an author is given the opportunity to review her own book. So I thought I would seize it! I actually hadn't re-read my book since the publication almost ten years ago. In the re-reading, I find I wouldn't really change a thing. And since the publication, I have finally felt vindicated in the writing of it by the fact that no other has been written on the subject, and that it is used as a reference in any book on Jung or the women, written since that time. I often wonder what the folks who tried to discourage me from writing it, and even went so far as to make it impossible for me to talk to some of the Jungian women surviving at the time of the writing, are feeling about it now. Of course, because of the age of many I talked to, most are now deceased.
   Anyway, for those interested in Jung's dynamic with women, and the lives of the women in his circle during that era, this still seems to be the only reference. I hope readers continue to enjoy it, and writers continue to find it a source of information .

5 comments about Wild Women: Crusaders, Curmudgeons, and Completely Corsetless Ladies in the Otherwise Virtuous Victorian Era.

1. I think this book is great....wonderful photos, interesting facts from ladies from the Victorian Era (which is a time in history, not a place or country) Great buy for fun women and history buffs!



2. Amusing collection of mini biographies of various American ladies rather strangely described as being from the Victorian era(surely it must be called something else in America, i mean sorry but she wasn't your Queen, you know)Some of the ladies I had heard of, many I hadn't, all were fun to read about. The back of the book proclaims 150 Women gave Queen Victoria fits! even though the book contains at least 2 women whom Queen Victoria greatly admired. One is Annie Oakley,although Ms. Stephens describes the Queen as 'simpering' at her (I am confident that Queen Victoria never simpered in her life). The other is Harriet Beacher Stowe, whose novel Dred she prefered to Uncle Tom's Cabin, saying "how interested she was in Nina, how provoked when she died, and how angry that something dreadful did not happen to Tom Gordon". Queen Victoria was at least as interesting as any of the women in Autumn Stephens' book, and would I am sure have sympathised with at least some of them. She gave her name to an entire age in England (and apparently in America too!)



3. I don't know what I expected but this is an extremely witty book. But it's also a very wise book. Stephens has written dozens and dozens of wonderful essays on some very remarkable women. I loved them all, but somehow I found myself lingering among those Controversial Curers and Ingenious Invalids! I must identify! Oh, dear, but then again, Charlotte Gilman Perkins is there, so what can I say? There are funny details, interesting facts, nice photographs and even quotes that will make your days pass by in sober reflection. Don't let the wit overwhelm the sober. A wonderful edition for ALL collections on women in history. Now if only I could get my hands on one of Lydia Pinkham's cure for PMS! You can find her grave online too. She was a marvel!



4. Though written with wit and humour, one can only begin to imagine the amount of research that went into this book. The convictions of the women described within this tome inspire perseverence in those of us who are challenged by our individual goals.



5. I found this book fascinating, a quick sometimes shocking read. A feminist eye-opener with short, readable, to-the-point anecdotes of unconventional women's lives from primary sources. Also if you love historical romance, you will definitely love this book. ~Gaelen Foley, author of PRINCESS

5 comments about Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI.

1. I met with Candice when she bought the apartment I was renting in San Francisco last year. As we parted, she gave me her book as a gift. As I started reading her book, I could not let go of it until I finished it. Candice talks about her extraordinary life as a bright, energetic and successful female agent, and a single mother. The book is full of interesting stories, which shed light to the life in FBI. Despite of all her strengths, she struggles for the acceptance of her male peers throughout her career, but she never gives up. Among many interesting stories, she tells how she learned to shoot with a shotgun, which ended up dislocating her shoulder, which apparently never healed. Although the police-work naturally required lots of physical power, she managed to overcame her deficiencies as a female agent with her strong sense of humor, intelligence and knowledge. She became one of the best profilers - a task that requires significant data collection and analysis. The book is full of interesting FBI cases of serial murder, drug dealing, child abduction, and even specific cases we all remember from the media (such as the Tylenol case and Unabomber), in which Candice was involved to solve the mystery and to arrest the guilty party, which makes the reading even more thrilling and interesting. I strongly recommend this book not only as a fun and inspiring reading, but also as a book which provides lots of tips for public safety.



2. This isn't the best book I've ever read but it's a fun and interesting read about her career in the FBI. She wisely chose stories from her career (which must have been difficult with so many years of experience) and always included down-to-earth humor and humility when appropriate. When she entered, the FBI was still adjusting to having women agents but she remained strong, taking the high road on many occasions when she was not treated fairly. As a result, her career flourished and her life is a story worth hearing. She is truly a trailblazer. Just nobody call her Candy.



3. This book should be listed under "fiction," because that's what it is. Ms. DeLong is a legend in her mind and her mind only. Anyone who reads this and believes Ms. DeLong actually did the things she claimed to do is living in a dream, just like Ms. DeLong. Don't waste your money. Ms. DeLong is as much a real life Clarice Starling as Barney Fife is Elliot Ness. I would recommend the book if you are looking for a good laugh. I rated this garbage one star because I wasn't given the choice of zero or negative stars.



4. This was an interesting book about Candice Delong written by Elisa Petrini. Before becoming connected with the FBI, she'd been a nurse in a psychiatric ward. She was a divorced mother then, still something of a stigma in the early 1980s. In the late '80s she was assigned to the cocaine trafficing in Chicago.
   
   There was a drug pipeline which stretched from the South American country of Columbia, then the cocaine capital of the hemisphere, up through Mexico into Texas; from there to Chicago. I've been told that it went through Lawrenceburg, TN on the way North.
   
   There is a manadatory minimum 20-yr. sentence for anyone caught with ten or more kilograms of cocaine (about 22 lbs.). Each kilo is the size of a brick and worth $15,000 - 30,000 depending on the quality of the drug. Heroin is a lot more. She had some interesting times working with DEA in narcotics, even being tricked into babysitting for the informant on her first case.
   
   She was involved in the Unabomber case and the way they discovered it was a former University of California at Berkley (where Savage (Weiner) may have found his cocaine) professor. She was in on the specifics in Montana,trapping Ted Kaezynski in 1996. Then back to San Francisco, where Savage settled.
   
   She gives good pointers on how to handle home invastion or sexual assault. Always yell "Fire." There are almost twice as many sex crimes against women over sixty as certain killers go after the older women to act out their anger toward the strong female figures in their lives and the fact that elderly women are easier to control. Compliance is by no means the same as consent.
   
   Rape is all about power, not sex. A woman's goal is to survive the attack. About 41% of rapes and sex assaults are committed by acquaintances of the victim. Sex offenders don't think like normal men and are always on the alert for what they think of as "provacative" behavior or dress.
   
   After twenty years, she became a private citizen again and went on the lecture circuit. She is proud of her achievements and the privilege to work as a 'public servant' in the FBI.



5. What an excellent read! The characters and relationships are very intriguing-the author's world is filled with both obvious and subtle villains, as well as obvious and subtle heroes. Candice herself is fun, likeable and strong enough to give as good as she gets. Though she is being constantly second-guessed, undermined and underestimated, she ends up turning her "weakness" into advantage time and again. The author sets up the rivalry between the FBI and the DEA and her unique role walking between the two. Highly recommended.

3 comments about LISTEN TO ME GOOD: THE STORY OF AN ALABAMA MIDWIFE (WOMEN & HEALTH C&S PERSPECTIVE).

1. The only thing I dislike about this book is that I did not write it myself. I grew up in South Alabama during the depression years, the daughter of a country doctor. I have been with my father to deliver babies in little houses that had no floors, no electricity, no plumbing. Often when he could not be two places at once, my father sent one of the midwives to do deliveries, and he had total faith in them. I can vouch for the authenticity of every word of this wonderful book, and the heroism and skill of these wonderful women.



2. Once I started reading this book, I could hardly put it down. I was impressed by Margaret Charles Smith's honest way of telling her extremely interesting story. She is a courageous person and devoted her life to helping mothers; most of them so poor, that they couldn't have afforded to give birth in a hospital. But given the choice, surely they would've chosen her,anyway, as she cared so lovingly for the mothers and their babies, in a way hardly possible in a hospital. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about midwives and births. There is also a lot that can be learned from it about the history of midwivery in the U.S.



3. I loved the raw honesty of Margaret Charles Smith's story. She tells about catching babies in a time when birth was not considered a medical crisis. As one of the last granny midwives, Margaret has much to tell us about how African-American midwifery was stamped out in particular, and how hospital birth gradually became the norm in this country. I devoured this book in a matter of hours, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of birth in the United States.

5 comments about Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love.

1. I think of myself as someone very well read on the subjects of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I must admit I've always held a bit of contempt for Assia--but I thought I should give her a fair chance and read this biography. It was terrible. Extremely subjective, certainly not an objective account with well researched and accurate information, as a biography should be.
   
   Ted Hughes was not given an accurate representation in the least. The authors repeat over and over that Assia had a very dramatic personality and often exaggerated and embellished stories, but then they use her journal entries--written in the midst of serious depression--as an accurate source, from which they described Hughes' "horrible" mistreatment and even abuse of Assia. They also cite a poetry book in which the feminist Robin Morgan writes that Hughes murdered both Plath and Wevill, and that Assia took Shura with her "'rather than letting Hughes raise the child.'" I see absolutely no reason for this to be included in the book, other than making Hughes look like the bad guy.
   
   Not to mention, the chapter titles sound like cheesy love songs from the 80s ("Torn Between Two Lovers," "Fatal Attraction".) And check out this opening sentence from Chapter Nine, entitled "A Fateful Meeting": "London in the swinging sixties: the pill, the Beatles, acid trips, the sense that the times were changing and 'anything goes'--but none of it was blowing Assia's mind." REALLY?
   
   I dragged myself along, and finally reached the point in the story describing Assia's suicide--when I thought the story would finally end, and I would reach the nice thick bibliography that should appear at the end--and block off a nice chunk of the book that I didn't have to read. But no, they go on and on about suicide, filicide, throwing out all kinds of irrelevant statistics ("A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology revealed that people were less prone to suicide if they had known someone who had killed himself." HUH?) and various other kinds of crap.
   
   One part I was interested in, though, were the pictures. I hadn't seen many pictures of Assia and the inserts certainly had plenty. Although... at then end, there is a picture of one of the authors with Ted Hughes. Right before the paragraph where they inaccurately describe how he wanted to completely rid his life of any reminders of Assia--and then they quote the feminist. Isn't that kind of wierd?
   
   This book was obviously written for a bourgeois audience who love to read about romance, sex, and suicide--I guess I can see why the authors were interested in writing a biography about a person like Assia. I honestly felt sick at the end. Don't read this book--really, for the sake of your health, and for the sake of Ted Hughes, and extremely skilled poet and genuine, but private, man who deserves the be portrayed accurately.



2. this was a great read and lets you see inside of Wevill's head...makes you love her or hate her



3. This deeply researched book goes into detail after detail about Ted Hughes's relationship with two talented women living in an age about to burst with freedom for women. Although the Suffragette Movement had power, giving women the vote in decades before Sylvia & Assia were born, they were still (as the authors point out) stuck in a mind-set that "without a man, a woman is nothing." Romance to this day plays a huge part in people's lives, men & women, gay or straight. People do continue to commit suicide over failed love, especially teenagers. But this book goes into detail about how Assia's personality & life experiences led up to her suicide & the killing of her little daughter. Her father was a natural story teller & he adored her. Her looks slayed men, she could snap her fingers & they'd all lie down for her but she had--according to people who knew her--a strange lack of awareness of her own intense beauty. She had a gift with words, used this gift in her work as a translator (a job I wished for when I was a teenager) and an ad writer (a job my sister & I both thought would be fun--we were teens in the 60s, when Assia was writing ads). The description of one ad she wrote---based on the 007 movies & The Odyssey was delightful. There were so many little scenarios like this in the book, it made me want to read it straight through in one sitting. People who saw Ted Hughes at Assia & Shura's memorial service say he was weeping. Why was he so unable to be kind to women who adored him & put their projects/lives on hold for him? Assia easily kept other men in the palm of her hand. Her Russian soul identified with the tale of Anna Karenina. It must've been a shock to realize she couldn't keep Ted Hughes hypnotized. She clearly had come to a fearful place--a child out of wedlock back when that simply "wasn't done," lost her job, apart from her doting father, Hughes prevaricating as to whether he'd buy a house with her or not, trying to keep his relationship with her secret, him not admitting Shura was his daughter. Above all, the looming ghost of Sylvia Plath--perfect housefrau, good mother, genius of a writer. All that crept up on Assia as she faced the loss of her Cleopatric beauty. In the many photographs this book offers, she looked gloriously beautiful to me. There are women who continue to be beauties up into their 80s/90s. If only--if only--if only Sylvia & Assia had close friends who could reassure them that yes, beauty changes over the years or you can survive without a man. I wonder why Hughes didn't honor Assia's last wish to be buried in the simple countryside. The authors offer a possible reason. Why was Hughes such a predator? Perhaps the way he grew up, having to hunt to put food on the table, one of the few young men in a WWI descimated Yorkshire, resulted in a loner who had to shake women off him like a Retriever shaking off lake water? This book clearly explains how the tragic end of Assia's life was woven, beginning with the tapestry she mailed to Sylvia at the beginning of her affair with Ted. It is a must read for anyone interested in the strangely woven lives of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Assia Gutman Weevil.



4. My take on Assia's life story will be somewhat different
   from the other reviews. Most readers, it seems, regard the
   chapters on Assia's formative years as material to slog though
   in order to get to the juicier escapades of her adulthood. But
   for me, Assia's childhood in Palestine made for fascinating
   reading. I was raised in Israel, and grew up there with the socialist party line, so to speak. In the teen-aged Assia I
   found an alien, unrecognizable creature, given the time
   and place she was in: vanity, selfishness, beautiful clothes,
   Vogue, sunbathing on the beach, and private Christian
   schooling. The average girl her age in those times would
   have rejected the trappings of middle-class life, spent much
   of her free time with a socialist youth movement, hiked the
   country, planted trees, and been involved in clandestine paramilitary activities. Despite, or perhaps because of
   her bizarre, countercultural upbringing, I thought it was tremendously sad that 14 years of living in Palestine did
   not instill in Assia a heightened Jewish identify, and/or
   any loyalty to the country that gave her family a safe haven.
   
   Overall, I found Assia a sad, pathetic individual, a user
   of people who evidently had a very low self-esteem. Aside
   from her oblique influences on Plath and Hugh's poetry, I
   consider Assia's only lasting literary legacy to be the
   translation of the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, thereby
   bringing him to the knowledge of the English-speaking
   world.
   
   Like others, I take issue with the authors that Assia
   was ahead of her time. Perhaps she was, at least on
   the open marriage front. But if she really was such
   a brilliant feminist then why did she place herself in
   a state of total emotional and economical dependence upon Ted?



5. Finally, the story of Assia Gutmann Wevill is told, and what a story it is. The life of the "other woman" in the mythic marriage of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes seems eerily like the life of Plath herself. Even the excerpts from Wevill's journals sound -- in tone, style, and content -- like they could have been ripped from Plath's own journals.
   
   I have studied Plath's life and work for a long time, so I am always interested in any new material that is brought to light. The authors have done a fine job with this book. I have read their previous book, "In Our Hearts We Were Giants," which was well-researched and interesting, but I believe their book about Assia Wevill is more well-written; I could barely put it down.
   
   And I have to admit -- after reading Diane Middlebrook's excellent biography of Ted Hughes, "Her Husband," I gained quite a bit of understanding and sympathy for Mr. Hughes. The biography of Assia Wevill, however, negated all of that. I will be interested to reread "Her Husband," and see if I regain any of that feeling.
   
   And now they are all gone, all of these unbelievably intense, brilliant people, so heavily laden with self, self, self. It's likely we'll never know the truth about how everything went down. And down and down, until everybody was dead.
   
   The saddest thing of all is the murder of Shura Wevill, four years old and innocent of everything.

5 comments about Out of the Cocoon: A Young Woman's Courageous Flight from the Grip of a Religious Cult.

1. This was written for me. My next door neighbors were converted to being JW. This was when we were young children. I do stay in touch periodically with this friend who I met when she was only 4 years old. She is still a JW and has raised her children this way. She told me a story of abuse by her Father who was a drug addict and a pedophile. As a child she often went hungry as her father wasn't bringing home income. Her mother allowed her child to associate with me because we had her stay for dinner almost every night, This draws some light for me to her plight. In school where she was forced to stand in the hall during the pledge of allegiance. This is against JW rules. She quit school as soon as possible. She home schooled her children before it was a common thing to do. Not all JW people abuse their children. I can tell you that after her terrible childhood my friend is an excellent mother. She put being a good mother as her top priority in life. Once you are in this religion it's pretty difficult to leave. Normally when you leave a church it's not the end of the world. For these people their whole world crumbles. It's terrible to bully a child because of a parents beliefs. Most people don't realize that joining JW can also effect your health or kill you. You can not get a blood transfusion. A very personal thing for me because I'm alive today because of blood transfusions. I also recommend I Witness which explains in greater detail what JW believes.



2. I ordered this book anticipating a story of someone freeing themselves from a cult as the cover suggests. I guess you can't judge a book by its cover. The first six chapter are from age ten (intro. to JW's) to age eighteen (freedom). After that it is Brenda's life story, with the watchtower popping up every now and then. I have read many books regarding the watchtower, and have personally dealt with JWs. I was bored with the rut the book got into as she told her life story and forgot that her book was about leaving a cult. At times it seemed if anything bad happened it was the watchtowers fault (normal sruggles in life). Many things she went through lots of kids go through when they decide to leave their parents home. Some of the hardships she endured she put on herself. At one point I forgot that the book was about leaving a cult and listened to her complaints about struggles many Americans go through on a regular basis.



3. Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (1/08)
   
   "Out of the Cocoon: A Young Woman's Courageous Flight from the Grip of a Religious Cult" by Brenda Lee is a memoir chronicling the author's escape from the binding hold that the Jehovah Witness religion had on her family and life and the consequences that met her afterward. When Brenda was a young girl, Jehovah's Witnesses visited her Pennsylvania home with their literature and talked her family into doing a free bible study. That one knock on the door would forever change Brenda's life and her relationship with her family. Her mother became immersed in the Jehovah beliefs and decided that the whole family would be baptized as Jehovah's Witnesses. Brenda's father refused and was the only one not baptized although he did attend the meetings at Kingdom Hall.
   
   Jehovah's Witnesses have a very rigid belief system without any room to bend. Growing up in the Jehovah faith was very traumatic for Brenda as she found herself isolated from the rest of her classmates. She could not celebrate the events they celebrated, participate in school activities, or date. Also, as a Jehovah's Witness you cannot be friends with or associate with people who are not of the same faith as you. To top all of it off she even had teachers who abused her because of her religion.
   
   When she finally came of age she escaped to live with a cousin that she had never met in Colorado and tried to start her life anew by breaking free from the holds that the religion had on her. However, her insecurities fostered from being isolated and ostracized as a child followed her into adulthood and there were consequences that followed.
   
   Unfortunately in the Jehovah faith once someone leaves the religion they cannot be associated with anymore by those still in the faith. This even applies to family members. So in a sense by leaving the religion she also lost her family, all except for her father (he was not baptized into the faith). After trying to "save her" and failing, they would not talk to her anymore and essentially they cut her out of their life.
   
   While I understand that the Jehovah faith did have a huge effect on the author's life it seems that she blames everything that goes wrong on that premise which I find a little bit unbelievable. There are other factors involved that cause things to turn out the way that they do. I do understand her anger but in some cases it seems that it is misdirected.
   
   All in all, the book is a very engaging and a fast read! I read all 238 pages from start to finish in one night. I learned a lot about the Jehovah's Witness faith and I was actually shocked by a lot of the things that I read. I honestly had no idea that these people who come knocking on my door believed some of the things that they do. To disown a family member because they choose not to be involved in your faith is, in my opinion, ridiculous! I applaud Brenda Lee for having the courage to come forward and write this memoir and hope that others can benefit from reading about her experience. I think that anyone who is considering becoming a member of this religion or any similar religion should definitely read "Out of the Cocoon" before doing so!



4. I can't say enough about this book. Admittedly the child abuse Brenda describes is sometimes very disturbing to read but what makes it disturbing is that it actually happened and was condoned by this religious group. Chapter 1 starts out with a graphic story that Brenda wrote called, All Alone in the World. You might think her writing isn't good, but that's because she was only 12 when she wrote Chapter 1. The rest of the book is so wonderfully written...Brenda is a remarkable story-teller. I truly felt like I was in her shoes. I felt her pain, confusion, guilt, fear, joyful triumphs. You may think this sounds like a totally depressing book but it's actually quite light-hearted and funny. It contains a lot of Brenda's off-beat humor and many inspiring quotes. Sometimes I laughed and sometimes I cried.
   
   Out of the Cocoon shows how Brenda's mom, a normal all-American Methodist Sunday school teacher could be swept up in the destructive rules imposed by the Jehova Witnesses and how those rules could ultimately sever her family ties forever.
   
   Brenda's book is about so much more than growing up in a cult though. She talks about being a single mom and struggling to survive, feeling vulnerable and alone and rejected by those she loved, being in a bad relationship because she was afraid to be all alone. Every teenager and adult in America should read this book because it helps the reader understand how our childhood so dramatically affects our choices once we become adults. Very insightful!
   
   The message is clear that if you think you're too strong-willed or smart to ever become a member of a harmful group or cult, you have probably just moved one step closer to becoming one. Don't believe your family is safe like her mom did. She thought Jehova Witness seemed so nice when they offered a free study but this is how they trapped Brenda's family into joining them. I was SHOCKED to learn that they even have a door-to-door quota to meet and have to turn in how much time they spend talking to people when they go to people's doors. Then they become downright cruel and shun their own children if they don't want to be a member of their church! Unbelievable!
   
   I highly, highly recommend that you read this book because it could prevent you from losing your child or parent someday. As a parent myself, I feel fortunate that I can share this knowledge with my family. I have a cousin who is a Jehova Witness and now I understand why she became so distant from me when she joined this church.
   
   Bravo to Brenda for being so courageous and saving/helping others through her story!!



5. I read this book and found it very enthralling. It kept me interested from beginning to end. After reading it I was able to pass it along to my neices who, never being JW's were able to understand what we (those of us former JW's) went through. They could understand it in simple language and we shocked and stunned by the simplicity of the book and yet the complications of being a JW. I wholely recommend this book to any and all who are or have left the JW's to understand the simpliest form of abuse that takes place without even knowing it.

5 comments about Janet Frame: An Autobiography; Volume One : To the Is-Land, Volume Two : An Angel at My Table, Volume Three : The Envoy from Mirror City/ 3 Volumes in One Book.

1. Janet Frame's autobiography is great literature and certainly revealing memoir with powerful insights. At one point she claims that "time is not time gone, it is time accummulated..." (p.191) I found myself thinking about this idea day-after-day, and journaling its truth for me.
   
   Some of her opinions written some years ago are proven by the test of time: "...in the late 1950's Coca-Cola had an aura of magic, of promise, as a symbol to many outside the United States of America of all that was essentially American, generous, good...bathed in the glow of a country's morning that was not yet tarnished by the scrutiny of daylight." (p. 297) We all know now the pain of the world's scrutiny of America post 9-11.
   
   Janet Frame lived a most difficult life made so very terrifying due to the misdiagnosis that nearly ruined her life. However, she NEVER lost sight of her gift, the need, her call, to write; and it was her determination to stay with the writing that saved her life.



2. Like some of the other reviewers I discovered Janet Frame through the movie,'An Angel at my Table," and I knew I had to read something of hers.
   I started with her autobiography, and I'm so glad that I did.
   This is perhaps the finest piece of writing, bar none, fiction or non-fiction that I have ever read. I think Frame is a genius, she should be awarded every prize for literature in the world. This is a funny thing to say about such a humble woman who endured so much to become one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.
   I was completely bowled over, enthralled, by her recounting of her life. Her word pictures, her recollections of places and things are incredible. I don't know another writer who has as fine a capacity for detail and description. The book is utterly lyrical as she weaves a painful, at times, story through decades of her life. I could not put this book down at times and I grieved when I had finished it. Stories like hers are instructional and give us all a reason to go on living. I sometimes wonder, I'm a memoirist myself, but a baby compared to Frame, how did she do it? It may be crazy to think this but I wonder if those numerous shock treatments she endured rearranged her brain in some magical fashion and gave her the capacity to be a superwoman writer? The line between genius and insanity is permeable. I think writers, for good and ill, are exquisitely fine-tuned, sensitive people. Unfortunately some of them are so beyond ordinary human beings they can't survive living in the world, but what they have left us is priceless as we make our own life journeys. Frame has allowed millions of readers, I hope, to accompany her on her challenging journey through life and she shows how she coped with fate and a set of circumstances given her courageously, copiously, and heart breakingly. I am in awe of her acheivement.
   She is a writers writer. Her musings on art and the capacity of the imagination are among the finest I have ever read. She is an inspiration to artists everywhere.



3. I came to this book by way of the movie "An Angel at My Table" [which was fairly true to the book]. I had never heard of Janet Frame, and was so intrigued by the film that I knew I had to read her autobiography. The book introduces you to her impoverished life in New Zealand [she was born in 1924], and includes about two dozen pages of photos of Janet's family [it was wonderful putting the real faces to the ones we were introduced to in the movie]. From the epilepsy of her brother, the drownings of her two sisters, her own mental breakdown in college [which was erroneously diagnosed as schizophrenia], you understand how all of her traumas and perceptions are incorporated later into her writing career. She overcomes daunting events and social alienation to become a novelist, poet, and short-story author.
   I have continued to read more of her writings.



4. I do not know of any author who can retain so much authencity in his writing and yet produce such beautiful and imaginative prose, other than Janet Frame.
   
   Her excellent autobiography is definitely worth a reading and offers an insight to her other works which are, at times, more experimental and harder to grasp. I have seen the film adaptation but this book has even more to offer: the heartfelt descriptions of the family members, some beautifully written passages which could hardly be translated into film, the 24 pages of delightful photos of Frame and her family...etc.
   
   Excellent.



5. Janet Frame was an amazing woman. She died on Jan 30, 2004. I had this book on my 'need to read' shelf when I read an obituary in the NY Times about her death at age 79. She endured so much and wrote so keenly. She was thought to be a schizophrenic and wrote about her periods of madness in mental institutions. This autobiography was fascinating for me. There is a gentleness and everlasting patience about her that will make anyone like her. If you want a real treat...find the film AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (from 1990) that Jane Campion (famous for the film THE PIANO) to complement the book. If only I could have met this woman. I would have loved to have tea and crumpets with her.

4 comments about Children of the Storm: The Autobiography of Natasha Vins.

1. Children of the Storm is a touching story. When you read it, your appreciation for God will grow and the problems you have will seem smaller. We are blessed beyond measure to live in the United States of America.



2. I opened the book for the first time Sunday afternoon in the car, and finished it on Monday night. Natasha tells of her girlhood, and the persecution her family endured for Christ. I really appreciated her telling of how she came to the Lord; until she graduated from high school she was a "Christian" because her parents were, and wondered how important it was. Then she understood the gospel and her parents faith became her own, and she lived for Jesus. She has an engaging manner of writing, perhaps because she writes as one real person would speak to another, not with studied eloquence.
   
   I was encouraged by the testimony of the trials and severe hardships her family went through. It made me reflect on how easy I have it here, and what I am willing to sacrifice for my Lord. I would encourage Christians, young or old, to read "Children of the Storm."



3. This is one of the best-written and most gripping Christian autobiographies I've read in years. I started it in the afternoon, managed to put supper on the table for my family and get the kids in bed, and finished the whole thing. My father is a Baptist pastor and we regularly prayed for our fellow believers in the persecuted church, so it was especially moving for me to get a clear picture of what life was like for the Vins family as they tried to minister in the Soviet Union during the years of Communist oppression. I would recommend this book for junior high students on up. It would be an excellent book for families to read aloud and discuss together, or for Sunday School teachers to share a chapter or so with their classes during a reading time each week (they'd keep coming back for sure). The book really makes you evaluate the depth or your own Christian commitment in the light of what Natasha and her family endured.



4. This is an autobiography of a mid-twentieth century Russian girl, Natasha, and her family from Kiev. It is an adult book that children with 5th grade reading level can also enjoy. Children of the Storm recounts her father's imprisonment, her schooling and questioning of Christianity, and all that happened to them in the years of Soviet crackdown of Biblical Christians. Fast-moving, very interesting, well-written. I highly recommend it.

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