From a corner in the library

Book info

Picture from Amazon.com

Title: Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood
Author: Julie Gregory [http://juliegregorysickened.com/]
Date of publication: September, 2004
Synopsis:  A young girl is perched on the cold chrome of yet another doctor's examining table, missing yet another day of school. Just twelve, she's tall, skinny, and weak. It's four o'clock, and she hasn't been allowed to eat anything all day. Her mother, on the other hand, seems curiously excited. She's about to suggest open-heart surgery on her child to 'get to the bottom of this.' She checks her teeth for lipstick and, as the doctor enters, shoots the girl a warning glance. This child will not ruin her plans. From early childhood, Julie Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her mother's mind. Munchausen by Proxy (MBP) is the world's most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse, but Julie Gregory not only survived, she escaped the powerful orbit of her mother's madness and rebuilt her identity as a vibrant, healthy young woman:not solely a victim of child abuse. [From Goodreads]

Right, so while reading this book my most frequent question was: What's the difference between a memoir and an autobiography? Yeah, I know... I was really into the book *rolls eyes for the people who didn't catch the sarcasm*
It was not boring, and it wasn't quite interesting. It was just there in between...
Obviously I was shocked to learn about Munchausen by Proxy. What a cruel and twisted way to destroy a kid, right? Super scary, if you take into account that doctors trust the mother to tell what the kid is feeling... but it is even scarier to think that kids actually begin to develop some of the symptoms so that the limit between what is made up and what is real becomes blurry.
But I felt cheated while reading the book. Yes, she had a crazy mother who took her to doctors all the time and gave her medicine she didn't need. And yes, that's freaking twisted and stupid and scary. But her childhood sucked mainly because she lived in an abusive environment. Her parents hated each other, they fought constantly, never showed love in a normal way and hit her! So yeah, she suffered because of the MPB, but also because she had sucky parents... which, for me is a huge part of the problem, and was not mentioned anywhere when advertising the book.
Now, don't get me wrong, I felt sick and sad when I read what she went through. But the book title and description made it sound like she was amazing because she beat MBP when really she overcame her past with shitty parents. I don't know if I'm making myself clear...
Anyway, memoirs/autobiographies are not my cup of tea, so that might just be the reason I didn't particularly enjoyed this book.


Would I read it again? Yeah... probably not.

According to writersdigest.com/ the difference between a memoir and an autobiography is mainly that an autobiography includes your whole life, while the memoir is only one part of it. :D Mystery solved.