Escape by Carolyn Jessop, Laura Palmer
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Book Reviews of Escape
Book Review: This book swallowed my life for 3 solid days
Summary: 4 Stars
I couldn't put it down! The last book to hold my attention was HP & The Deathly Hollows - and this book isn't too far off that mark: both contain magic, wizards who predict the weather, fortune-telling, mystical clothing, and outright magic!
The narrative is powerful and gripping, despite it's somewhat amateurish writing. I read this book and kept wondering how the author possibly made it though it all (a sign of an excellent survival-type story like "Adrift" or "Left for Dead").
What struck me the most was the systemic and wholesale abuse of children. I am not a father, but I've got enough of the 'preserve the species' genes in me to WISH that I get the chance to meet Merrill and Barbara Jessop. At risk of sounding like a Keyboard-Warrior (or worse some bible thumper), it would please me deeply to be able to act as a righteous hand of punishment to both of them. The way Carolyn describes how Barbara savagely beat her 4 year old son Patrick and in no way was punished/scolded/warned/murdered by her husband makes me deeply, deeply angry...and sad. These children are going to need decades of deep, deep therapy and counseling just to ensure they wont be a danger to themselves or others in their adult lives.
One piece I found to be ironic was that Brian, Carolyn's boyfriend after her escape, turns out to be Jewish. For a woman to go from one man who's CULTure that degrades, denigrates, and devalues women to another man's culture that places women in a high place of status (and damn near reveres you if you're really old) just for being a woman, regardless of your ability to please his sexual desires, was perfect poetic justice.
I will cite the book for a few points, though:
1. The author spends a great deal of time (90%?) describing the terrible people of the cult whom are almost all men, but spends very little time speaking about the men that really did love their wives and children. She makes a few token mentions but that makes me want to know more about the decent men who live in the cult. This is out of my desire for accurate reporting, not for gender equality.
2. The writing really was bad in some places, forcing me to reread the same paragraph a few times.
3. She should have broke her husbands knee caps.
Book Review: disgusted
Summary: 4 Stars
I was horribly disgusted by the abuse related in this book. The amount of power and control that the men in this "religion" have over the women and children is abuse in it's most vile and refined form.
If the things Carolyn recounts in this book are remotely true, this book reads like a finely choreographed dance of abuse and manipulation that's had over a hundred years to perfect itself.
I actually found myself wondering if even the men could be blamed for what's gone on...after all, they, TOO, were raised to believe that they have the power and authority to physically, emotionally, and spiritually berate their families into heaven.
GENERATIONS of this abuse has been ALLOWED, in the name of "religion"? Religion should not be accepted as giving a person the right to abuse their spouse/children.
And there are a lot of ill-educated people around who wonder why these women don't just leave if all this stuff is supposedly going on. Well, if all this stuff is going on and it has been for several years, and they are raised to believe that it's not just acceptable, but NECESSARY in order to enter heaven, what else do they know? For generations this abuse has been permitted to exist, to become fine-tuned, and to take over every facet of their lives.
It's a self-contained brothel of physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, and sexual abuse that is encouraged and expected of its followers.
I am disgusteed to think that when this stuff goes on OUTSIDE the confines of a "religious" shroud, it is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Yet these people have been allowed to practice this for generations with only the slightest slap on the wrist for doing so.
Disgusted.
Book Review: Torturous true story, torturous writing
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't particularly like this book; I think it is poorly written; even as if it had been written by a secondary school student; BUT it just has too many details and corroboration to be ignored as fiction as some have recommended. It is just too powerful a narrative of what the most extreme example of inequality of the sexes and degradation and devaluation of the women accomplishes. It would be VERY difficult (close to impossible) to have created this history as fiction. It is also hard to believe that a professional author (co-author, ghost writer, whatever) would have let this book go out in print in this form under her name (as Laura Palmer has done). "I did this. Then I did that. Then XX said this. Then I did this, and XX did that." OMG!
Carolyn Jessop must be one of the most resilient and strong characters of whom I have ever read a first person memoir. It is horrifying that (as she describes in the closing chapters of the book) her situation is similar to thousands of others within the FLDS. In our democracy we suppose (we assume) that all have the freedom and ability (free will) to make their own choices. This book illustrates torturously that in some cases this assumption is just not true.
Book Review: Fascinating memoir
Summary: 4 Stars
Carolyn Jessop's tale of her life in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and her escape from abuse and oppression at the hands of her husband and her religion is heartbreaking as well as inspiring. It is depressing to me that people In this day and age and in this country are still living in such a confining and brainwashed society.
Ms. Jessop's writing is very good and extremely compelling. My only complaint is that she has a tendency to be repetitive in her explanations of FLDS doctrine, as well as explaining multiple times who people are. It almost seems as if the book came out in a serialized fashion, where all information necessary to the narrative is given, even if it had been mentioned in a previous chapter.
I was fascinated by this book, as well as grieved for this woman and her experiences. I would recommend this to any reader of memoirs, as well as students of religion.
Book Review: A brave book
Summary: 4 Stars
This book descibes a life style that is hard to believe is allowed to exist in a developed world - but the radical polygamist sect that Carolyn Jessop was born into allowed men to beat their wives, abuse their children and marry wife after wife. The complete control that the cult leaders and the husbands have over the lives of their wives and children and the manner that they treat them are all justified in the quest for spiritual standing in heaven!
A brave escape and the drive to start a new life provide this author's story with a happy ending.
Not the best written book (repititious and a little too much time spent on justifing the author's actions within the strange family she belonged to ) I have read, but a story worth writing makes this a book worth reading.