"Helen Fremont has rendered a devastating family portrait of the intergenerational trauma that can torment the children of Holocaust survivors. Beautifully written, honest, and psychologically astute. A must read."
Description
A luminous new memoir from the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller After Long Silence, The Escape Artist has been lauded by New York Times bestselling author Mary Karr as “beautifully written, honest, and psychologically astute. A must-read.”
In the tradition of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and George Hodgman’s Bettyville, Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on to both Helen and her older sister a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world.
Fremont delves deeply into the family dynamic that produced such a startling devotion to secret keeping, beginning with the painful and unexpected discovery that she has been disinherited in her father’s will. In scenes that are frank, moving, and often surprisingly funny, She writes about growing up in such an intemperate household, with parents who pretended to be Catholics but were really Jews—and survivors of Nazi-occupied Poland. She shares tales of family therapy sessions, disordered eating, her sister’s frequently unhinged meltdowns, and her own romantic misadventures as she tries to sort out her sexual identity. Searching, poignant, and ultimately redemptive, The Escape Artist is a powerful contribution to the memoir shelf.
Reviews
"[A] crackling second book, The Escape Artist is a standalone work. Graceful, gracious, and...engrossing."
"The Escape Artist does what the best memoirs do by forcing readers out of their own comfy shoes and into those of another human being. By the time Helen Fremont returned me to my own life at book's end, I found it had been both shaken and expanded by hers. Isn't this why we read?"
“Fremont has created a humane, honest, eviscerating but entertaining exploration of intimate betrayal, the legacy of secrets and the high cost of truth-telling. I was gripped by this powerful and utterly engrossing memoir and remain haunted by the characters and feelings it aroused. From what was taken away, Fremont has given to all of us.”