The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir
by Laurie Sandell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Laurie SandellEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-07-29
ISBN: 0316033057
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir
Book Review: As Brilliantly Artistic As It Is Breathtakingly Affecting...
Summary: 5 Stars
The Impostor's Daughter is a stunningly original and utterly compelling memoir.
It is original in so many ways. The drawings and the text combined add a depth
and descriptive precision that hits you on so many levels, emotionally, intellectually
and creatively.
As a psychotherapist that specializes in people who have been harmed by living
inside a lie that no one in the family is allowed to name or challenge, I know intimately
that although Ms. Sandell's story is utterly unique and mind blowing, the sad truth is
that so many people have had to survive equally dysfunctional families, though,
her's is uniquely creative in its dysfunction.
I have already used this book in my psychotherapy practice to show people
who are still in the "it wasn't so bad, it wasn't like they ever beat me with a lead pipe" defense
of minimalizing that if you didn't have the worst parents in the world that you have no right
to complain about the authentic pain that you experienced.
As if all you have to do to be a good parent is not physically beat your children.
What makes this book so special is that while it is quite easy to chronicle others
bad behavior, Ms. Sandell doesn't choose the easy way out, that is to say, she never is
vengeful nor in denial about how badly she needs her father merely to be the sweet and
loving man she senses he has the capacity to be, instead of his misguided belief that in
order to be good enough, he had to be extraordinary.
The book so vividly illustrates that being an ordinarily loving human being is so much
more important than being "better than anyone else", which, of course, if you have been
so damaged that you believe this lie to be the truth, just demonstrates the sad truth that if you
feel you must be better than everyone else, when in fact, nothing could be more extraordinary and
special than what is actually the real truth - that nothing is more special and extraordinary
than simply being a loving and compassionate parent and human.
Being an ordinary and deeply loving, kind and compassionate person, is, to me at least,
realizing the greatest achievement of all, giving someone the gift of feeling loved, cherished, and wanted.
I'll end this review with the ironic realization that the book is such a page turner, that by the
time I got to the section in which she describes her eventual addiction to the sleeping pill Ambien,
I put off taking my own sleeping medication which I cannot sleep without in order to stay up a few
more hours in order to continue the feelings of deep pleasure and poignancy that this book provides from
the very beginning and only intensifies as it approaches the unexpected and utterly amazing ending.
When I finally got to the very last sentence of the entire book, I was unprepared for the intense emotions
I felt wash over me by how the very unexpected and utterly courageous and heartfelt message of emotional kindness
with which she ends the book.
It has, at least for now, restored my belief in the capacity of decent humans to choose compassion over anger,
especially when that anger is so fairly deserved - but the author chooses to accept her pain without giving in to
the all too easy choice of responding to being betrayed with well deserved anger.
Just.... Wow...
Summary of The Impostor's Daughter: A True Memoir
Laurie Sandell grew up in awe (and sometimes in terror) of her larger-than-life father, who told jaw-dropping tales of a privileged childhood in Buenos Aires, academic triumphs, heroism during Vietnam, friendships with Kissinger and the Pope. As a young woman, Laurie unconsciously mirrors her dad, trying on several outsized personalities (Memoirs Books
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