An Eye Opening Read (Scarred: She Was a Slave to Her Father, Pain Was Her Only Escape - Sophie Andrews)

Member Name: blonde_girl774

Product:	Scarred: She Was a Slave to Her Father, Pain Was Her Only Escape - Sophie Andrews
Date:	16/06/09 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Engaging & Honest.

Disadvantages: Rather Depressing.

Whenever I'm in the supermarket I always find myself drawn to the book aisles where I often pick up a bargain; my latest one was two books for £7 which is quite good value I thought. I actually purchased four books as I found three that I'd either wanted to read for a while or were fairly new releases by authors I really liked, this accounted for three of the four books. When it came to choosing a fourth book there wasn't anything that overly grabbed me and so the purchase of Scarred was a somewhat spontaneous buy.

Scarred was written by Sophie Andrews who wasn't an author I'd ever come across prior to purchasing this book. That's probably because Scarred is the first and only book written by Sophie Andrews to date. It was published back in March 2008 by the publishers Hodder and Stoughton with the paperback version being released only recently in January 2009. Scarred is based on the author's life and the actual basis for the novel was a selection of diaries, letters and poems written by the author during her earlier life.

The Plot

The book focuses on the life of Sophie, from her early childhood memories right up until she was in her mid forties so it does span quite a large period of time. The book begins with the tale of a young girl who was adopted by a married couple when she was very young. We learn of the struggle she faced to relate to her adopted mother who seemed quite cold and distant throughout Sophie's childhood and also of the attentive, loving and almost suffocating relationship she had with her adopted father.

In fact this book is actually focused on the abuse that Sophie suffered at the hands of her adopted father, a father who seemed to adore his child and indeed dote on her every action and word. This was until her mother left when she wasn't even a teenager yet and her father turned his unnatural affections onto Sophie. We learn how her father was mentally, physically and sexually abusing his daughter on a frequent and regular basis. However it didn't stop with at that, he was even bringing friends home to do the same.

Finally at the age of sixteen when Sophie could take no more Social Services managed to have her admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she remained for several years. Here we learn how she turned to self abuse to deal with the things she had suffered in the past, how she struggled to come to terms with it all and how, even years later, these demons still haunted her. The story follows Sophie from her memories of the abuse to coping in the psychiatric hospital and finally how she fared when released.

My Opinion

This isn't my usual type of read in that I don't tend to opt for the abuse stories, largely because I find them quite disturbing. However this one caught my eye on the shelf in Tesco and I decided to give it a go. Having finished it just last night I've been left with rather mixed feelings about it. I wouldn't say I enjoyed this book at all, it's quite hard to enjoy stories of child abuse I'd imagine but I did find it quite an engaging novel to read and certainly one that held my attention for the entirety of the book.

I must admit that I'm one of these people that don't really like reading about abuse, I'm sure no one does but it makes me feel quite disgusted and uncomfortable while reading it. Thankfully this book didn't really go into great detail about the abuse, although it did ensure the reader understood exactly what happened and also how frequently it did. I also think some incidents were probably glossed over but still I did feel rather sick reading some of the descriptions of when her father inserted bottles and knives into her.

What did shock me is how her father not only physically abused her but also the mental and psychological abuse he subjected her to. For instance when she was younger he used to give her lots of sweets almost as if he was trying to feed her up. As she got older he began to ration her food and made her survive on a measely food allowance while she had to cook him delicious meals. Food was also used as a reward for when she complied with what he demanded, starvation was the only other option open to her.

There is no doubt that the book was written with alarming honesty, the author obviously felt it important that the reader understand exactly how her life had been and seemed to tell her story honestly. It would have been easy for her to say that she came out of this ordeal fine and that she never self harmed or anything like that but she tells the reader how she did self harm, how she felt weak, etc. There was no attempt to paint herself in a positive light and nor did I feel she was trying to gain pity from the reader.

The thing that annoyed me most about this book is that Sophie's father appeared to have walked away from the situation and even remarried with nothing being done to him. Charges were never pressed by Sophie and the reason she gives for this is that she loved him too much. I did really try to understand this and try to understand why she still met up with him when she was older or even still spoke to him but I just couldn't. If someone had hurt you so much in the past why would you ever keep in contact with them?

A large section of the book talks about The Samaritans and how they helped Sophie through her ordeal, in a sense this is nice as it gives some credit to a charity that you don't tend to hear a lot about. In fact Sophie goes so far as to say that without them she would probably have killed herself years ago, quite a brutal and shocking revelation really. Along with The Samaritans it was Sophie's inner strength that got her through her ordeal; despite falling down several times she still made it through everything.

At just over three hundred pages long this book successfully manages to encompass over ten years of Sophie's life. It didn't dwell on one particular event or time and instead managed to maintain a quick pace. There were frequent memories of her childhood throughout the book and probably the largest portion was devoted to talking about her time in the hospital. Only a couple of chapters towards the end focused on her life at the time of writing the book and I thought it would have been nice to find out a bit more.

As for whether or not I'd recommend this book to others I'm not so sure, I did find it quite engaging although disturbing at the same time. I did feel general sympathy for Sophie as no child should ever have to go anything remotely like what she was subjected to. The overall emotion that I was left with at the end of this book was anger; anger that her father got away with everything he did and the fact that he even remarried - I'm sure his new wife knew nothing of the abuse he had subjected his small daughter to.

On the whole the book left me feeling rather empty, rather than feeling a sense of relief that Sophie managed to get through it I didn't really feel anything at all. There was no message of hope to other victims of child abuse, but maybe that was down to the fact that the story was brutally honest and so focused on how hard it is to overcome such things. In conclusion this was a different type of book to what I normally read and one that should not be chosen for some light reading. It's an affecting and harsh read.

Thanks for reading.

Summary: An honest account of child abuse and the scars it leaves you with.