Lily's Odyssey
This book is such an incredibly intimate look inside one woman’s life that I was almost ashamed of myself for reading it. The author’s voice is so true in its halting, neurotic narration that it was difficult to remember that this is a work of fiction.
We first meet Lily when one of her abusers dies and the reader is gently led through her mind’s wanderings as she tries to make sense of her role as a victim of incest. From the outside, Lily could be seen as any other woman raised in the Catholic Midwest during the baby boom generation. She managed to make her way to college, get married and divorced, and find a way to support her children largely on her own.
Lily’s Odyssey is not concerned with outward appearances, however. This story is about a woman’s journey to recall childhood abuse and come to terms with the way it has changed her life. Lily not only struggles to remember the abuse itself, but how to share that information with others, if at all. As a middle-aged woman, she has managed to find an awkward but polite existence with her extended family and worries that cracking open the past in order to be true to herself may destroy these relationships forever.
The dilemmas and internal monologue ring true as Lily takes the reader into her past and her nightmares. The story is a painful one, if only because the effects of the abuse on her life are so clear in so many ways. Lily’s view of herself and the world around her has been clouded by her mind’s attempts to reconcile her family’s inability to protect her from her abusers and the tangle of emotions and fears and rational thought is a difficult one to unravel.
It is said that one in four women suffers some kind of sexual abuse in her lifetime. With those statistics, it is not unreasonable to think that there is something in this book for everyone. If not victims ourselves, we all certainly know someone who has struggled with thoughts and feelings much like Lily’s and the author’s tender, accurate portrayal of the victim’s thoughts and emotions is a powerful way to increase our empathy.
Written by: Kari O’Driscoll, September 19th 2010
Thank you Kari for bringing this incredibly hard subject to the the table, for allowing as many people as possible to be aware of the nightmare these little kids go through and how incredibly important it is for the victim to be recognized and helped. Not doing it is opening the way to a life full of fear, anxiety and nightmares.
Your statistics are scary but unfortunately true. Most of us know at least one person who has been a victim of abuse but how many of these little kids got the help they needed as kids, very very few. Anybody who is strong enough to read it should read this book and maybe this will save at least one little child from pain and suffering. Abuse is everywhere, in any economic and social layer of the population, even in very educated, religious families.
-Isabelle
What a great review, Kari. This sounds like a book I need to read and an author I'd like to know.
Thank you, Kari!
Thank you for looking at the review, ladies! I am glad to know that this book is getting some attention. I appreciate your visit to the site as well.
Kari