Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Vintage (2003), Edition: 1, 240 pages
Description
Carolyn Slaughter is the author of ten novels, but for the last 12 years she has been completely silent. She had become conscious that there was something hidden in her past that had always haunted her fiction but which she had never fully faced. This memoir is the result of confronting the truth about her traumatic childhood.
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User reviews
LibraryThing member melmg
intelligently and beautifully written. picturesque descriptions of african landscape. extremely disturbing content re author's tortured relationship with her abusive father and negligent mother. context is not for the faint of heart. very moving story of overcoming great odds set in africa.
LibraryThing member Figgles
Ow, a very painful book to read. I am unwilling to say it's a bad book but it feels more like viewing someone elses private therapy - I am glad that she has the courage to come through but it's painfully obvious how much damage has been done. I also found the anti-colonialism a bit heavy handed but
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given her experiences it could be a metaphore for what happened to her personally. One of my friends favourite books but I wouldn't rate it so for me. Interesting and sad. Show Less
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Before the Knife is a very quick read. Sometimes I felt I was reading fast because I wanted to get through the truly disturbing parts. In truth they were always there, lurking behind the words Slaughter didn't say, or worse, only alluded to. Because Slaughter announces early on, in the preface,
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that she was raped by her father the knowledge is out. "...the moment when everything changed only really came the night that my father first raped me" (p 4). However, she promises her story is not about that horror in particular. True to her word, Before the Knife isn't about that trauma but having announced it, we readers are always aware of it. We translate innuendo to mean abuse every time. The story of an African childhood is lost to the knowledge something darker is at play. What a different book this would have been if we didn't know! As expected Slaughter comes back full circle to the first night of the rape, describing it in more detail. Why, I do not know. The entire book is a tangled and confused mess of emotions. Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
3. Before the Knife by Carolyn Slaughter
I'm not sure what Carolyn Slaughter intends us (the readers) to take away from her memoir. She tells us on page 4 that she was "first" raped by her father when she was 6 years old. Then there is no further reference to this until the epilogue, when she
I've seen this book described as a brilliant evocation of a childhood in the beautiful African landscape. There may have been glimpses of that, but for the most part the evocation didn't reach me. If you're looking for evocations of African childhoods of British colonials read Doris Lessing (fiction and non fiction or Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. I really didn't like this book.
2 stars
I'm not sure what Carolyn Slaughter intends us (the readers) to take away from her memoir. She tells us on page 4 that she was "first" raped by her father when she was 6 years old. Then there is no further reference to this until the epilogue, when she
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briefly describes how years later as an adult she remembered the incident. In between, she tells the story of her childhood, with a father who was admittedly cruel and distant, and who was a colonial administrator in what is now Botswana, and a mother who was about as emotionally distant as you can be from a child and still claim to be a mother. Definitely a dysfunctional family, but without knowledge of the rape there is not enough context to explain the author's rage and rebellion from the time she was a small child. So is this a book about incest and the damage it does? Is it meant to be about recovered memories? If so, there is little analysis or context provided for either. Maybe it's just a book about an unhappy childhood. I've seen this book described as a brilliant evocation of a childhood in the beautiful African landscape. There may have been glimpses of that, but for the most part the evocation didn't reach me. If you're looking for evocations of African childhoods of British colonials read Doris Lessing (fiction and non fiction or Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. I really didn't like this book.
2 stars
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Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2002
Physical description
240 p.; 5.17 inches
ISBN
0375713468 / 9780375713460