Customer Reviews

Touched

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book hit me like the legendary "ton of bricks". I'm an adult male who had an experience similar to Robbie's, at a similar age. I don't know how this author managed to capture the experience, but reading the book (I've gone through it twice so far) was, for me at least, a frightening and yet healing journey back in time.

I emphatically disagree with the May 14, 2001 reviewer who stated: "I was more than a little disgusted by his seemingly fond memories of his molestation and how he mentioned it as an 'affair' he had when he was young..." Read Robbie's section again. What makes you think he has fond memories of the episode? Here's a young man who cannot emotionally connect to anyone around him - parents, coworkers, (ex)girlfriend. He's drifting through life, wanting to touch and be touched, but he can't. Robbie's wounds are subtle but finally devastating. He's still living in that bus station; he can't find the door out.

Like Robbie, as a college-age adult I told a couple of my girlfriends about the experience; like him, I told it as a "wow, strange but cool, huh?" story. I now know that's just another way of disconnecting, pretending it didn't matter. Campbell got it just right. Absolutely authentic. Absolutely tragic.

Reading Jerry's (the "boylover") point of view was especially profound as well. I understand better how perpetrators feel and think. He clearly couldn't help being attracted to young boys, but Campbell shows just as clearly that he consciously chose to act on that attraction. I felt sorry for Jerry, but ultimately, his fate was the direct result of his own deliberate choices.

Young boys (yes, even before puberty) are curious about sex, just like fish are curious about the fishhook. Only adults can guard them against a lifetime of feeling that barb in their guts.

The word "Touched" is used by the author to convey multiple meanings. Add another facet: This book touched me profoundly, in multiple ways. I recommend "Touched" to all who wish to understand, and particularly to survivors of "boylove" experiences.

I bought this book more than a year ago and I finally got around to reading it. I found it to be thoroughly satisfying, unsettling, and very precise in its characterizations. Unlike other reviewers, I found the section told from Robbie's perspective (the boy that was molested) to be very plausible. Certainly, there are those who have been sexually abused and would consider Robbie's reaction to be anomalous, even "fiction." But we are all individuals and we all experience things differently.

I'm a journalist that covers the courts, and I've witnessed many intergenerational criminal sex cases. I even roomed with a man who told me about when he was molested at age 12 by an older man, how at the time he was a willing participant. And I've witnessed cases that leave me with no doubt about the predatory visciousness of the perpetrator or the shameful harm inflicted on the child.

This book is merely a snapshot of a very complex phenomenon, albeit a very good snapshot. Love it, hate it, think it puerile or simplistic, whatever your reaction may be to this book, it is exceptional in its ability to provoke thought.

'Touched' is as well written as it can be. It is told from four distinct points of view, all of which bring us closer to what really happened between a grown man and a young boy. The most touching, yet disturbing, of the views comes from the molester himself. Unable to help himself, he finds he has somehow fallen completely in love with a neighborhood child. How this came to be, and all that lies before and after, soon becomes painfully clear.

This is not an easy read. At times you find yourself flinching from the honesty and pain the characters reveal in their lives. Yet it should be read, if only for the way the author is able to convey a shocking, disturbing crime in realistic and non-judgemental terms.

The title 'Touched' seems at first exactly like it sounds. As you read, you find that word showing up again and again in many different ways. It is up to you to interpret the meaning. Is it literal, being touched physically? Is it the way we can all touch each others lives emotionally? Is it about being a touch off in the mind? This novel finds many ways to get under your skin.

The ending is the only downside in an otherwise tremendous work. As we see Robbie as an adult, he seems less vulnerable and harder in a way. His anger is understandable, but it is offset from the tone of the rest of the story. As it stands, though, this is a powerful work that demands to be read.

In this era where many sexual abuse victims are coming forward to denounce the Catholic Church for protecting their molesters, this book is more timely than ever. While I'm not a fan of multiple narratives, this book uses the device effortlessly. Each of the four sections is narrated by the victim's mother, the victim himself, the man who molested the boy, and the wife of the child molester. Somehow you manage to feel sympathy for all. Not to sound sexist, but the male author gets the two female characters exactly right, something that not many authors accomplish. Each narrator has a distinct voice, something else that can be tricky, judging from how many books fall short of doing this.

The child molester himself is presented as complexly as the other main characters, a man who tried to eradicate his urges through extensive therapy, but who ultimately failed. And the boy himself, whom we hear from as adult, has reactions that may surprise the reader.

This book was surprisingly good. I had heard nothing about this book, the author, just found it one day at a book sale and decided to buy it. Definately worth the money!

Scott Campbell takes a situation you hear about on the news or see on Court TV, child molestation (which Dateline has taken a big interest in)and breaks it down into four-points of views; the mother of the victim, the accused, his wife, and the victim himself. What Campbell does well is that he manages to assign each character his or her own voice. They see the matter differently, they try to deal with it differently and accept what's happened in his or her own way. It's something that Michael Cunnigham tries in "The Hours" and "A Home at the End of the World" but Campbell, in my opinion, executes with true profession.

It's an interesting story. Yeah, parts of it are hard to get through due to their explicit nature. I actually did find it a nice pleasure read, simply because it was well written and took something that unfortuantely happens a lot and gives a voice to the accuser, enabling him to try and defend his actions. There are passages that are very graphic in nature, so be warned and expect them ahead of time. Other than that, let yourself enjoy this gripping story of two different families being imapcted by a single event.

I found this book to be one of the most thought provoking reads that I have come across in many years. This novel not only shows Campbell's amazing word choice and fluency, but it makes each and every reader honestly ask themeselves to reconsider child molestation. This book makes you feel sorry for Jerry, the molester, and it examines so many aspects of his life. I would strongly recommend this book to any that are looking for a book that is different from others and one that will make re-evaluate who and what is a child molester.

I really liked this book because it was very true to the events and the feelings of all the characters. I was held in the story waiting to find out what was really in the mind of the boy around which the story revolves. It resolved the story in a way which I felt was authentic. I felt for and cared for all of the characters.

Touched is by far one of the best books I have read all year. The voices of the characters are realistic and convincing. You actually feel Linda Young's guilt as she laments over the fact that she was not at home to prevent her son from being abused. When you meet Jerry Houseman, you can sympathize with him as well. He is not a monster but a character who believes that he is truly in love with a child and doesn't understand why the rest of the world can't accept that the child loves him back. In the third section of the novel you meet Jerry's wife as she struggles to keep her family together. You want to hate her as well for taking Jerry's side over an innocent 12-year-old's, but you can't, because she is nothing more than an innocent victim herself. The only reason why I didn't give the book five stars was because I didn't like the last section of the novel as much, Robbie's section. I feel that Campbell lost his power over characterization and voice a little bit in that section. However, the novel as a whole was an excellent read, and I would recommend it to anybody.

I first read "Touched" about 10 years ago, having had similar experiences as Robbie when I was a 12 year old boy. Eventually, the book managed to wend it's way into boxed storage in our cement basement. I decided recently to clean out some of the junk down there when I came across this book again. Suffice it to say that very little work was done as I sat upon a box in a chilly corner and reread remembered passages.

While some of the dynamics of my particular situation were different, I strongly identified with the main character Robbie. How he processed what he was going through - both as a child and later as an adult - resonated deeply with me. Like Robbie, I too confronted my mother as an adult (my father since deceased), and asked why I was not protected from the older boy who was essentially a serial child molester that lived next door to us. Unlike Robbie, I was never put on the stand to publicly relive those whispered moments in dark places, nor were any of the other young victims (mostly girls - I was one of the only boys). And while I was relieved by the hushed dispatch of the situation by a "committee" of neighborhood dads, I see now that perhaps the decision not to prosecute did more harm than good. No one ever spoke of it again, and we were left to quietly deal with our secrets in our own way, within the limitations of our juvenile coping mechanisms.

As he reached adulthood, Robbie's feelings of anger towards his mother, his unresolved confusion about the mixture of powerful conflicting emotions from revulsion to reluctant indulgence to guilt-ridden pleasure, are all things that I wonder if anyone could fully understand having not gone through it. Perhaps my personal perspective detracts a bit from a truly unbiased critique, yet the fact remains that these passages were felt on such a visceral level, in no small part because of the talents of the author and his keen ability to so eloquently paint feelings with words.

Touched was a major touchstone for me as I underwent the difficult journey over a decade ago to emerge from the darkness and isolation of the secrets I was forced to keep. The end of the book was particularly powerful as Robbie realizes he was so busy fielding other people's reactions that there never seemed room enough for his own. Likewise, while society in general seems to suggest how I SHOULD feel about what has happened to me, Touched gave me permission to admit how I actually DO feel - to remember how I DID feel when it was happening to me.

Touched touched me. Ultimately, this book helped me reach out across the years to that little boy that was me - to see him through older, wiser eyes, to understand him, to embrace him, to bring him back into my heart - to be whole again.

Touched is without a doubt the best book I have read this year. The honest manner in which Campbell relates a disconcerting story makes it a brave and compelling page turner. His ability to write the thoughts of a woman is brilliantly astute(like Lamb, but better). The plot had me totally engrossed from page one.

The novel is insightfully psychological in a completly non-pretentious manner that will move and touch you. Told in four parts, from four perspectives, I believe that everyone will find something in this novel that they can identify with. Overall, a perfectly wonderful and highly recommended read.