I don’t  know why I ever chose to torture myself and willingly read A CHILD CALLED IT,  but Dave Pelzer broke something inside me – I haven’t been right since.  Knowing that, you’d think I’d have learned a lesson, (yeah, I know… I’m audibly laughing right now, too).  Nope. Years after ‘ACCI’ I decided that I wanted to read THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, and I let Jack Ketchum walk right in and start poking at the wound that David Pelzer left with a big, pointy stick.  I think it was the masochist in me who invited Mendal W. Johnson to drop by and sucker-punch my PTSD in the back of the head.  As far as the ‘Let’s Go Play At The Adams‘ fiction/non-fiction debate’ goes – I’m sticking with IT’S FICTION, but I’m sure all the atrocities have been committed, many times, and on many different Barbaras. 
Like LGPATA, THE ABUSE OF ASHLEY COLLINS is not a true story – but it very well could be. Watching the decreasing sanity, and the elevating brutality of Ashley’s parents demonstrates just how fast situations can escalate. One little poke at the wrong moment, and all control is lost – you can’t come back from certain things.

       

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. It is disturbing, and hard to read at times, but the author is not exploiting issues to gain shock value for a horror story. Jon Athan comes at the story from every possible angle, from every p.o.v., and sheds light on problems that most families would keep hidden in the dark. Let me misquote one of my favorite movies before you start reading…

WARNING: This book contains scenes of graphic violence, including violence towards children. This book is about abuse—verbal, physical, and emotional. This book does not feature any explicit sex scenes, but it does discuss sexual abuse. This book is not intended for those easily offended or appalled.

Ashley Collins, a sixteen-year-old girl, has severe behavior issues. She regularly fights with her parents, Logan and Jane. When the fights become personal and physical, Logan and Jane decide to take matters into their own hands. They chain their daughter in the basement and abuse her in an attempt to rescue her from her bad behavior… while delving into their own deviance and depravity.

This is a story of family and abuse. This is a story of violence and discipline. This is the abuse of Ashley Collins.

Jon Athan, author of A Family of Violence, brings you an uncompromising vision of human horror. Can the cycle of abuse be broken?

 

Find The Abuse of Ashley Collins on Goodreads, Amazon, and it’s available through the KU program.

Connect with the author via Twitter – @Jonny_Athan, Facebook,  through the officialJon Athan Website, or his author pages on Goodreads, BookLikes, LibraryThing  &Amazon. You can email him directly at: info@jon-athan.com, or head on over to the West Coast and start stalking him the old fashioned way!

 

* I'm really glad that you didn't shelf the idea/book, and I think that THE ABUSE OF ASHLEY COLLINS is a better title than your original title. In fact, I think I may have misinterpreted 'A GENERATION OF ABUSE' when I first read it. I was going over my notes and highlights for the review when it clicked - the cycle of abuse - "ahh... OK".

* You made a comment on the 'Join the mailing list' page, and if I WASN'T searching for the things that you mentioned, I sure am now!! It may be a 'private matter', but... we're friends, right? :) IDEA!! If you collect all of the police files, doctor notes, patient files, and maybe even a "found" journal of Ashley's - it could sell as a companion book to THE ABUSE OF ASHLEY COLLINS.

* Something you said (after the story, before 'Dear Reader') made me [inappropriately] giggle for a second - (you know... that super disturbed, "I know I'm going to Hell", "Don't judge me!" giggle? No? Ever laugh at a funeral? Um... OK. Nvmnd).

"[...] Sure, there were a few things that may seem outlandish, especially towards the end [...]"

Well... there was something on the news just a few days ago -

"On Monday, March 6th, 2017 - North Carolina authorities arrived on the scene to witness 18 year old suspect, Oliver Funes Oliver Funes Machado, exit the family home "carrying a knife in one hand and a severed human head in the other."
Authorities found what was left of her body between the kitchen and living room. Funes-Machado had also told the dispatcher his 4-year-old and 2-year-old siblings were in the house. He said his father was not home.
The younger sisters were not hurt, and a teenage brother was at school."

Peace, Love & Necrophilia ♥
 ~  šhαd⊕ω gïrﾚ

 

(spoiler show)

 

Approximately, 1984 redone as a colonial-era comedy of manners. As we know from Orwell, it was a bit difficult during World War II to keep track of what you were supposed to think of the Soviet Union. Here, Doris Lessing describes a bunch of very amateurish Communists, who are stuck in what was then Rhodesia, watching the action from the sidelines. At first, they are ostracized for supporting the Soviet Union. But Germany attacks the Russians, Stalin is suddenly our friend, and the Rhodesian Communists are now flavor-of-the-month in their provincial backwater. They enjoy it while it lasts, making sure of course that they have time left over for petty scheming and intriguing. Then the Allies triumph, the Cold War starts, and they're wrong-footed again. It's quite funny in a very understated way. She reused some of the material in The Golden Notebook.

There are several different schools of thought when it comes to writing about sex. At one end of the spectrum, there's Mamma Mia: Dot, Dot, Dot. Well, at least that satisfactorily ducks the issue altogether. And at the other end, if we insist on staying Swedish, there's IKEA assembly instructions: insert rod A into hole B, making sure that X stays in contact with Y as you do so. This also has its merits, though once again you feel something's missing. In between, there are various types of poetic metaphor that people like to use; but here, too, I'm often in some doubt. What, if anything, do these metaphors actually refer to? All too often, you fear the author's just cut and pasted them from somewhere else.

Every now and then, however, you find an author who's actually got something new to say about sex, as opposed to a better way to put a coffee table together or a novel twist on a dubious metaphor. It's surprising how rare these people are. Jan Kjærstad is one of them, as you'll discover if you read Forføreren and the rest of the trilogy. And Doris Lessing is another; I think The Four-Gated City is the clearest example.

I wonder if she actually experienced sex this way? It's hard for me to imagine she didn't. Well Doris, I'd like to thank you for what you did: both for telling us about the strange and wonderful places you were able to get to, and for finding words that made them at least partially comprehensible. You must have been such an extraordinary person to have as a lover.