Sickened? I Was (Sickened - Julie Gregory)

Name: shewhoguards

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Product:	Sickened - Julie Gregory
Date:	27.05.08 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pulls the reader in

Disadvantages: Should we really be enjoying childhood abuse stories?

'Sickened' is one of the newly-named misery-lit genre, a true story of childhood abuse. In Julie's case, it's the story of a little girl whose mother had Munchausen's by proxy - a mental illness that makes you invent fake illnesses for your child to get attention, trying to get treatments for them for illnesses that don't actually exist. With Julie, it didn't stop until her mother had nearly convinced doctor's to send her for completely unneeded heart surgery.

I actually picked the book up because I was interested in Munchausen's by proxy, and found it enthralling reading. That's really half the problem. Even though it's told in first person, it's told *as* a story, and it's as easy to get sucked in as by any fiction book. Once you do... it's too easy to forget that this is *real*, that this is a *real* story of childhood abuse, not just something that someone pulled out of their imagination.

I don't think childhood abuse is something I should be enjoying reading about because it makes an exciting story. In fact, I don't think it's something I should be *enjoying* at all for any reason. I took the book back to the library, and have avoided misery-lit since then.

It's available for £5.24 from Amazon if you still want it.

Summary: Not something for me