Excellent book!

I have heard quite a bit about Munchausen's by Proxy over the years, but not much about Munchausen's itself. In this memoir by Helen Naylor, we learn how her mother's decades of fake illnesses finally led to her death, and how this all had a devastating effect on Helen.

Elinor's illnesses were self-manufactured. But she kept diaries. Dozens and dozens of them over the course of fifty years. As Helen begins reading these diaries she learns so much about her mother, but even about herself as well.

Helen's life was tragic. Her mother was always ill in bed, leaving Helen to fend for herself for days at a time. This was when she was a young child. As a teenager, things became much worse for Helen. As an adult, Helen began reading these diaries and is more than determined never to ever become like her mother. She also learns what love is and how it is an unbreakable bond, even as she survived a tragic past.

I had this book review in audiobook format, and it was narrated by the author. Listening to this book had quite an impact on me. This was no easy book to read or listen to, especially because things were so tragic. Sometimes Helen read the journal entries in order, sometimes randomnly. In either case, they were more than disturbing. Now Helen herself is a mother, and she wants never to repeat her mother's mistakes. More than that, as a reader I often felt as if I were absorbing the same words that Helen was reading, and wondering what it would have been like to be in her shoes, especially when she was a child.

Many thanks to Thread and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.

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2 people found this helpful

True story but reads like a thriller 😱

This was a audiobook that kept me hooked all the way through. Helen as an adult looks back on her life as a child, teen and into adult years and how everything was centred around her mom. And when things weren’t about her, how she would act to get the attention back.

I found it really interesting that Helen’s mom kept journals detailing each day in a couple of lines. When sections were read during the book you could feel the detachment from situations and the excitement if a medical professional gave her attention.

This book publishes November 25th. Thank you to the author, @netgalley and @bookouture for the advanced audio copy.

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2 people found this helpful

Much of my own childhood was reflected in this.

This book was hugely validating to take in. While my own experience was more a covert (less obvious / dramatic) there was 80% of this book I could relate to, which helped me to validate what happened in my own family.

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Couldn’t Finish It - Depressing & Frustrating

It’s a rare exception if I don’t finish a book but this book falls into that rare exception. Helen’s story is a sad one and her childhood with her mother was clearly challenging, however, as a book it came off as Helen having “victim/martyr mentality”. Her mothers diary entries did little to support the narrative around them. I can only base my review on the first half of the book since I didn’t finish it but I didn’t finish it because it droned on and on with sameness. Memoirs typically take the reader on a journey where the subject grows and evolves throughout life’s trials and tribulations. Half way through the book, Helen had grown from childhood to motherhood with little to no personal growth in relation to her mother. I went from sympathising with childhood Helen to being frustrated with adult Helen that she was still allowing herself to be mistreated and barely made any effort to move outside the mental confines her mother had laid out. I don’t recommend this book to anyone who had a turbulent childhood because it’s not empowering at all. In fact it felt downright depressing and frustrating.

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Touching memoires

Growing up with a mother that has munchausen’s and narcissistic personality disorder is too insane to believe. Every chapter revealed a deeper darker twisted cave that this woman grew up in. And reading how it doesn’t stop just because she’s grown… A very enlightening book that can hopefully be a cautionary tale for those in need. ♥️

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Interesting but a little long…

One downside of the book is feeling like it could have been nailed down in 10 less chapters. It was mind-bending to realize the horrible health care system they had to rely upon, even as she seeks support for PTSD. I just hope Helen continues to thrive in spite of the harsh realities she faces head on with great courage. I believe she is an inspiration to the many lost souls trying to find their footing after being raised by truly crazy, abusive people.

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Instead, read Motherland: by Elissa Altman

Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing by Elissa Altman, got 5 (rare) stars from me. This was one star all the way through until the ending redeemed it a little.

Both authors have similar stories, though throw the whole Munchausen's thing into Naylor's story but Altman does 5 times as much in half the time. Both author's can write, but both cannot tell a story. Naylor's ability to tell the story really didn't work--until the end.

Yes, she is deserving of our sypathy/empathy, but she comes off almost as unlikable as her mother. While she is the victim, she writes the story in the "victimy" way that nobody really wants to read, still full of rancor and overuse of negative adjectives and adverbs in dialogue.

She doesn't bother to develop her husband as a character, who I assume (since they are married with two kids) was her primary support though her hellish journey--at least in her adult life.

There's way too much telling, not enough showing and worse--there was one VERY long chapter where she goes to "clear" her mother's house because her mom is moving. I kept assuming (as the chapter droned on) that Naylor was packing up her mom's house for the move. Halfway through her mother's appalling antics, ten tons of bitter dialogue, etc., I realized the author was getting the house ready to SELL--so it looked decent. Upshot is that very little gets done and it feels like an endless tirade of how truly wretched her mother is. But we already knew that. That chapter could have been 75% shorter. The whole book should have been 40 percent shorter.

I think in cases where the person the author is writing about is so horrendous, shorter is better because you really do have empathy/sympathy for the person enduring this awful situation and you just can't stand to listen anymore. And there's the frustration of Naylor's inability to stand up to her mother. Yes...reasons. but it's frustrating to listen to the same stuff over and over.

And the worst part, where it's an epic fail: At a few points the author talks about how much she loved her mother. There is NO evidence of showing or telling that would lead you to believe she loved her mother. Not one scene. Not one good thing said about her mother as it relates to their relationship. So you just have to take the author's word for the fact that she loved and idolized this horrible woman. And when Naylor is pregnant and her mom really goes off the rails and Naylor begins to catch on, she keeps wishing she had her old mother back--the one she loved so much. Again...reasons. But you can't fall back on something like, "Everyone will understand why I loved my mother. I was a kid, I didn't know any better" or whatever the reason, when you rightly paint the woman as the awful woman she is (albeit mentally ill).

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