this book is honestly amazing…. it is so sad to read and it is hard to believe that what happens in this story actually did and does happen. i admire the author so much for coming forward and writing a novel on the issue of child abuse which is such a tramatizing and emotional issue. i read this when i was 12 or 13 and at that point in your life you don’t actually realize that this happens to children. i loved it!

I found this book to be hard going – but not because it was boring, or tedious, or difficult in its style, but simply because the sharing of the telling was painful in its intensity. In fact, I read the book in a short afternoon (just couldn’t put it down) and then spent the rest of the day feeling somewhat traumatised. However, I think its GOOD to come away feeling traumatised, as what that poor child went through should never be belittled or glossed over, but held up there as a warning for some and a beacon of hope for others.

What this poor man went through is horrible. HORRIBLE. Much more horrible than, say, the horrible person I am for wishing I hadn’t bothered with this book.

I’m an English teacher and all of my students have enthusiastically recommended A Child Called It. The amazing school librarian recommended this book. All of my co-workers recommended this book. And I’m left thinking, “emperor’s new clothes much?”

I really tried to give it a patient shot, but the author’s style was excruciatingly tedious. Which is to say mindnumbingly boring. And it’s really hard to bore me with the written word.

On one level I was so sad and sorry and angry for the author, but on another level I was so sad and sorry and angry for him from the second page on that it became quite difficult to put up with his writing form for the remaining pages, the objective of shock/anger/grief having already been accomplished.

I’ll admit to massive power-skimming after an early point. Perhaps it isn’t fair of me to say I’ve consumed this (when really I’ve picked and grazed after the first course), but I do think this review is fair – if a book is miserable to read (for the wrong reasons), it’s surely valid to say so.

I read the first ten pages to a friend who wasn’t aware of the book’s power status or my feelings toward it; he had the same reaction as I did. A moving tale of abuse, boring as hell to get through. Perhaps we’re both so used to/sensitive to the horrifying stories that have surfaced in the last quarter century that we don’t stand up and applaud a book as a way of standing up and applauding its author. The latter I would gladly do. The former? No – I’m glad I saved my money and got it from the library.

This book is just shocking. I could not believe the intensity of the abuse.

You can read my review here
http://www.martiegras.com/blog/archives/000650.html