Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery [Paperback]

Patricia Weaver Francisco (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 2000

She invites the reader into her life and into the questions raised by a crime with no obvious solutions or easy answers. We see the dimensions of a human struggle often kept hidden from view. While there are an estimated twelve million rape survivors in the United States, rape is still unspeakable, left out of our personal and cultural conversation. In Telling, Francisco has found a language for the secret grief carried by men and women who have survived rape.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Telling requires a kind of courage that I normally lack. This book is an exertion, a promise I'm keeping, and it's slow going." Readers may find the going slow, too, because Francisco (Cold Feet) writes in an almost halting, episodic style as she breaks a long silence to write about rape and its long, perhaps endless, aftermath. Her memoir is deliberately self-conscious in its revelations of what happened, in its exploration of emotion and in its construction of meaning. And it works, because Francisco's method is appropriate to the larger argument that animates the memoir: that, while telling is excruciating, silence is poison. In 1981, while her husband, Tim, was in Vermont, an intruder broke into her Minneapolis home and raped her. Francisco underwent counseling and received a great deal of love and support from both Tim and her friends. However, despite her best efforts to carry on with her life, she found that she was unable to recover completely from the trauma. She now attributes the difficult labor she endured four years later while giving birth to her son to a suppressed physiological memory of the rape. She also feels that her ordeal placed a stress on her and Tim that contributed to their subsequent divorce. In order to complete her recovery, Francisco needed publicly to acknowledge what happened to her. So she attended several Minnesota rape trials and participated in the "Silent Witness" project, which publicizes cases of women killed in domestic violence. In this fierce book, she strikes a difficult balance between the subjectivity of memoir and an eloquent argument that society must look sexual assault in the face before it can be stopped. Agent, Ellen Levine.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"...Telling is an important memoir by an eloquent writer." -- Jane Hamilton

"Electrifying...beautifully written." -- Washington Post

"Francisco draws strength from beauty and artfulness and passes that strength along... sad, wise, and lyrically written..." -- Hungry Mind Review

"Francisco...encourages others to start a dialogue about the ‘unspeakable' crime... ‘Evil is best born when it's fully visible.'" -- New York Times Book Review

"I have read many accounts of sexual assault, but I can't remember any as powerful as Patricia Francisco's..." -- Rosellen Brown

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (January 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060930764
• ISBN-13: 978-0060930769
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,347 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #60 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Abuse & Self Defense > Sexual Abuse
  • #66 in Books > Self-Help > Abuse

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and Well-Written, Struck Me Right To The Core, April 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery (Hardcover)

As difficult as it was for me to read this book, due to it's similarity to my experience, I found it to be so extremely compelling--I couldn't put it down! Ms.Francisco has an incredible command of the English language and was able to communicate in painful detail, her inner-most thoughts and feelings, before, during and after the rape. As I read this book, I went through and highlighted many many many passages that I felt pertained directly to me.....so that my husband could read it and gain better insight into what I was and still am thinking. This is a wonderful, amazing book, that both rape survivors and non-rape survivors can benefit from.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars INTENSE AND INTELLIGENT AND BEAUTIFUL, February 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery (Hardcover)

This is an intelligent, poetic account of rape and its aftermath by an intensely thoughtful and observant woman, who happens also to be a writer. If you are a survivor, this book will help put into words, some of the intricate and complex feelings of fear, terror, ineffable shame etc. that many, many survivors experience alone. It is also a VERY GOOD book and a beautifully written one, about a woman's quest to make sense of her experience and to regain a foothold in a new world - one of supreme vulnerability and insecurity - one where a woman can be raped in her own home, in her own bed, by an intruder who breaks in and robs her of a world she had been taught to believe in.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TELLING is an intimate, inspiring book about rape recovery., January 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery (Hardcover)

I must admit, I was a little scared to read this book. I know Patricia Francisco, and I wasn't sure whether I could handle the pain and sadness of reading this account of her rape and recovery. But the more I read, the more my heart continued to open -- for while I shed a few tears, reading about her son, for instance, and about the end of her marriage, there was also a generous light and a sense of sweetness and hope that consistently came through in her words. Do not be afraid to read this. This book makes you feel good.