Customer Reviews

The Three of Us: A Family Story

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the season for memoirs of dysfunctional parents. First Miranda Seymour published "Thrumpton Hall" of her English upbringing with her eccentric father. Then Doris Lessing created "Alfred and Emily" of her parents, complete with an alternative history of them. Now Ms. Blackburn has written of her family in the 1960's in a factual matter of fact style. She introduces her alcoholic, violent father and promiscuous, sexually competitive mother in the opening chapter, while offering hope of healing at the same time so that the reader is not overwhelmed with depression. It is amazing that the author turned out to have avoided her parent's mistakes and have a happy life. She is an excellent writer and story-teller.

This book was mentioned in a Harper's review about memoirs in general, and given high marks for its unusual format and content I bought it to study the writing technique and couldn't put it down. The present and past are deftly woven into a thickly textured family drama that drew me in from the very first page. The diary entries are emphatically apropos, and along with the family pictures create a sense of intimacy with the characters and scenario that feels almost like being part of the family. The story was rough, but the telling of it rang true and lent a certain stability to the challenging terrain. I highly recommend this book.

It has the peace and clarity that often mark those who have been through suffering and come out the other side. The author's honesty, acceptance and humour while recounting some terrible events inspired respect and reverence in me. Julia Blackburn reminds us that, whatever has happened to us and whatever our mind has made of it, forgiveness and the unconditional love that are our birthright are always there to be reclaimed.

An unsettling memoir of a precocious upper middle class adolescent reared in an eccentric, drug-influenced and sexually promiscuous household. Odd-ball, destructive and even humorous characters abound. Exotic locales and strange photgraphs further add to the appeal of this autobiography. Emininently readable and absorbing, despite recurrent British-isms.

After reading substantive reviews of this strange memoir, I simply had to give it a read for myself. What's so striking about Blackburn's work here is her downright, unabashed honesty. Dad is a monster, alright, but his crazy drunken antics were somehow more acceptable than her mother's odd, boundary violations of an all too prurient interest in her budding daughter's private sexual coming of age. This is a torture Blackurn takes us through interspersed with passages on accounts she made some thirty years forward as this very same mother lay dying.

Of course, all this makes for an exceptional memoir. One I can be thankful for in portraying complex parents one still must come to terms with long after both have departed this world.

Powerful reading ranked highly on my list of must-reads. Should be better known (I think of the mega-hit, THE GLASS CASTLE, which is page-turning reading, but not nearly as well written and reflective as Blackburn's.)

Recommend--especially if you've experienced, first-hand, the pain of difficult parents.

There are all kinds of dysfunctional families. This is just one more, told well.

I loved this book and all it's honesty. I've heard it said that we read to know that we are not alone. I do believe this may be true. This book stunned me so because I had a mother who was jealous and envious of me and I felt so alone, and yet she did love me too. Just as in this woman's experience, I only got the mother who adored and truly showed her love for me when she became ill and I tended to her in the last year or so of her life. This woman's account of her relationship with both her parents is relayed so honestly that I must praise her writing as well as her sharing her life with the rest of us.

This book reminded me of "Running With Scissors" in some ways. The narrator is the daughter of an artisitic ,sex- obbessed mother and an abusive English teacher, poet father in the UK. I found it surprising that the author was able to grow up into a functining adult. It's a darkly, disturbing story.

It was a painful but well written story of a life of survival with disfunction in a girls life

I loved this memoir. Blackburn's highly stylized, acerbic voice breathes life into a fairly standard tale of family strife/abuse. Overall, a great mix of high drama and dark parody.

The Three of Us is a jungle populated with sparring creatures. During a fight, Blackburn's father says of her mother that she is "scarcely human." Blackburn's narrator appears to believe this of everyone, including herself: she often compares people to animals, and she focuses on how each family member has a primal urge driving him or her. While the many animal allusions don't explicitly encourage the reader to make light of the story's serious content, its sheer volume and exaggerated presentation seem designed to produce a smirk, and it enhances the book's efforts to satirize itself.

The mother's illness doesn't get enough attention, and as a result, it seems like a distraction--I might have liked for Blackburn to leave it out, perhaps cover a shorter span of time.

If you like your family angst wicked, this book is for you!