Oh boy. This is a memoir of a girl who was sexually abused by the same man for her entire childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. It's hard to read. And it's complicated to think about why anyone would want to read a book like this. That's probably why it took me nearly three full weeks to slog through.

 

What's the benefit of reading horrifying, painfully detailed descriptions of molestation? And what does it mean when I find myself wishing the memoirist was a bit of a better writer? All in all, I did not enjoy reading this. It made me sad and uncomfortable. But it also gave me a lot to think about-- big questions to wrestle with. And I think that's ultimately a good thing.

Very troubling subject matter but a well written and important memoir.

The back of this memoir states that it is a book about a relationship between a fifty-one year old man and a seven year old girl. And it's controversial because it is about just that, a relationship. A socially unacceptable, manipulative, controlling relationship, but a relationship nonetheless and Fragoso writes about it honestly, resisting the temptation to paint herself sympathetically to appeal to readers.Margaux is seven when she meets Peter at a swimming pool - she sees him playing a game with two boys and decides that she wants to join in. Over time Margaux and her mentally ill mother come to like and depend upon kind, generous Peter as a way of getting away from Margaux's father, who has good intentions but is at best absent and at worse an alcoholic brother. Gradually Peter makes himself indespensible to Margaux and starts to groom her. When their relationship becomes sexual, Margaux sees it as something she must just put up with in order to get the love and affection she craves. Even when she has a chance to get away from Peter, she can't bring herself to give up the only person in the world that she thinks truly cares for her, despite all of the things she hates doing. She shuts away that part of herself into a new persona and becomes slowly desensitised.Although a memoir like this, in which conversations are recreated and events described in great detail, can only capture the essence of what happened, Tiger, Tiger felt like it had a lot of truth. I've read some other reviews of it and lots of people are reacting against Margaux for becoming sexually manipulative and not getting away when she had the chance. But for me, this only shows Peter's power as he has manipulated Marguax to the extent where she becomes the instigator and sexual behaviour is completely normalised, something to put up with to get treats. I think it was brave for Fragoso to write it like that and to show ambiguity in all of the people she includes, rather than making it just black and white, good and evil. There is a scene that people object to in particular, where Marguax tries to become sexually manipulative with someone else, but that is how children who are abused often react, and that's usually how the abuse comes to light.The worst part for me was how lots of the adults knew what was going on, but decided not to know and to look the other way. All they do is spread gossip rather than help. I think that does happen in society - no one wants to think that a child could be getting abused, so people find reasons to think something else. In the afterword, Fragoso writes that she hopes the book will help people to become more aware that paedophiles don't look like monsters and don't act stereotypically, and I hope so too.

I was expecting something else from this book. I thought it'd be a lot of disturbing descriptions etc., but it wasn't. Not that much, at least. Instead, I was kind of understanding Margoux, and why she did what she did, and chose like she did. I was even wondering that if it was my life, maybe I would've taken just as much shit as she did? The sad thing isn't her relationship with the pedophile. It's her dad. He's the sad thing. And that's the worst about this book!
I'd like to know how she coped after this book takes place. What about her dad, does she still see him, talk to him? I have a lot of questions left that weren't answered throughout this book, but maybe it isn't possible to answer them all. After all, it's life. You don't get answers to everything.
As "The Globe and Mail" puts it: This book reminds us that pedophiles are like the rest of us: they buy cereals, walk the dog and do gardening. And that's exactly right!
This is a must read, if you ask me. It's both a sad and beautiful story. Read it!

At a public swimming pool in Union City, New Jersey Margaux was 7 years old when she met 51-year-old Peter. Margaux’s family life was so dysfunctional and Peter seemed so “fun”, hence that chance meeting became a relationship lasting 15 years, until the time of Peter’s death by suicide. It would seem like such a nice story except for the fact that Peter was a pedophile.

This book was difficult to read. It nauseated me. It made me angry. The depiction of Margaux’s father hit such a personal nerve that I had to close the book a few times and walk away from it. Peter made my skin crawl. Yet I kept reading. I would not have if this had been a work of fiction, but this was Ms. Fargoso’s personal account of what can happen when a child slips through the cracks and ends up in an adoring stranger’s basement.