Author: Jessica Stern (website)
Publication Date: June 22, 2010
Publisher: Ecco
ISBN: 978-0061626654
299 pages (ARC copy)
Source: I received this book for free as part of my participation in a virtual book tour through TLC Book Tours. This, in no way, affected my review of this book.
“I have listened and I have been quiet all my life. But now I will speak.”One of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder investigates her own unsolved adolescent sexual assault at the hands of a serial rapist, and in so doing, examines the horrors of trauma and denial.
Alone in an unlocked house in a safe neighborhood in the suburban town of Concord, Massachusetts, two good, obedient girls, Jessica Stern, fifteen, and her sister, fourteen, were raped on the night of October 1, 1973. The girls had just come back from ballet lessons and were doing their homework when a strange man armed with a gun entered their home. Afterward, when they reported the crime, the police were skeptical.
The rapist was never caught. For over thirty years, Stern denied the pain and the trauma of the assault. Following the example of her family, Stern — who lost her mother at the age of three, and whose father was a Holocaust survivor — focused on her work instead of her terror. She became a world-class expert on terrorism, a lauded academic and writer who interviewed terrorists around the globe. But while her career took off, her success hinged on her symptoms. After her ordeal she could not feel fear in normally frightening situations.
Stern believed she’d disassociated from the trauma altogether, until a devoted police lieutenant reopened the sisters’ rape case and brought her back to that harrowing night more than three decades past. With the help of the lieutenant, Stern began her own investigation — bringing to bear all her skills as a researcher — to uncover the truth about the town of Concord, her family, and her own mind. The result is Denial, a candid, courageous, and ultimately hopeful look at a trauma and its aftermath.
This is a raw, emotional look into one woman’s sexual assault and how it has affected her life. I felt like I was reading someone’s personal diary – with all of her intimate thoughts and feelings exposed. Stern holds nothing back as she tells the story of her and her sister’s rapes and the subsequent upheaval that this brings upon her life. It is hard to write a review about a book based on someone’s first-hand account of such a traumatic event since I have no basis in experience to identify what she must have and (probably) still goes through on a daily basis. I can only imagine what she must have suffered through and how she had to disassociate herself from the event and bury her emotions and memories in order to cope. It is not something I can even fathom.
I found parts of the book moved quickly and other parts dragged on. Many details were repeated over and over again and these parts felt like stream-of-consciousness writing, before the editing process begins. There were other times that I was a bit confused because of all the different people who came into play (detectives, the rapist’s friends/family, the author’s friends/family). Overall, these were minor grievances.
This book is very heavy and will really pull the reader in. The material is not easy to read. The most fascinating part (for me) was getting to know the author and how she has coped with the rape over the course of her life; her emotional responses to certain situations; the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); and her concern for her son and not wanting to impart her PTSD symptoms onto him. It is definitely an area that I find interesting (as a psychology major in college) and like to read about, when the opportunity presents itself.
Read more reviews on DENIAL!
Jessica Stern’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:
