Review by Booklist Review
A story of power, family, and struggle, musician and writer Fink's memoir is a captivating look at growing up in the shadow of a dominant, unstable parent. The author's mother believed herself to be a witch, casting spells against those who wronged her and haunted by spirits in the wilderness around their Alabama homes. Fink, her older sister Charlotte, and younger sister Christine all dealt with their mother's rages and rampages in different ways. Charlotte ran away to get married at eighteen. The author became a straight-A student with a scholarship to college. And Christine tried to support their mother and father by staying close by. Fink chronicles her upbringing and music career as part of the bands Little Red Rocket and Azure Ray. She brings readers through the moments that led her to realize her mother did fit the description of a "Witch"--one of the categorizations of a person suffering from borderline personality disorder. With rich imagery, thoughtful reflections, and compelling prose, Fink's memoir will resonate with readers of Tara Westover's Educated.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this riveting debut, Azure Ray singer Fink chronicles her chaotic relationship with her mother and the process of repairing the damage it caused. During Fink's Alabama childhood, her mother claimed to be a witch, chalking up her erratic behavior and hot-and-cold treatment of friends and family to manifestations of her powerful magic. In the early 1990s, Fink fled her unstable home for Birmingham, Ala., to start the band Little Red Rocket. Still, her mother's emotional manipulation and her father's meekness consistently pulled Fink back home. She broke free for good in 2019, when she settled in Twentynine Palms, Calif., and, while working with a Jungian psychotherapist, recognized her mother's behavior as a symptom of undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. Though Fink highlights how writing this account helped her "face biggest fears," she delivers far more than a therapeutic exercise--her lyrical prose and keen imagery lend the proceedings undeniable weight. Equal parts cutting and compassionate, this tale of hard-won peace will resonate with readers wrestling with their own complicated families. Agent: Yfat Reiss Gendell, YRG Partners. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Confronting a mother's madness. Musician, songwriter, and performer Fink makes her book debut with an emotional memoir of her long struggle to wrest herself from her manipulative, destructive mother. Growing up, writes the author, "there was no comfort, only a sense of danger, of death, a fear of being swallowed alive, out of existence." Although her father was gentle and caring, he could not protect his daughters--Fink and her older sister, Charlotte, and younger sister, Christine--from his wife's madness and alcoholic rages, nor from the family's financial straits. As an adult, Fink discovered that her mother fit the diagnosis of a particular borderline personality disorder archetype known as the Witch. Her mother proudly boasted she was a witch; reading about the disorder helped the author finally understand how it played out in reality. "What the literal witch and the borderline Witch have in common," she writes, "is the unique ability to control those around them, not through physical force or the use of political leverage, but through the manipulation of the other's mind." Caught in her mother's web, Fink spent 20 years trying to sever ties: "As fucked-up as it was, there was something comforting in the familiarity; her fear and sadness and mad ramblings were something I could lose myself in." Thankfully, her mother had once given her a guitar, and Fink found an escape in music. She started a band with a friend, acquired a drummer, and got a record contract. Soon they were touring 300 days per year. The author recounts a successful international career, which contrasted with her tumultuous relationship with her mother and her desperate efforts to help her younger sister deal with her psychological and emotional wounds. Now living at peace in the California desert, Fink attests to hard-won survival. A memorable book of raw, unvarnished recollections. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
