"Dancing with the Octopus" by Debora Harding

The true story of how, as a fourteen year old girl living in Nebraska, Harding was kidnapped at knifepoint from a church parking lot, raped and left to die in a cattle yard during a severe snowstorm. The book describes Harding's later battle with PTSD, a struggle which is exacerbated by the abusive behaviour of her mother.

And, in the end, the mother's psychological abuse and mental cruelty seem to be worse than the horrific ordeal Harding endured. The kidnap and rape was by a stranger and lasted for a few horrifying hours, the mother's abuse was repeated again and again for years.

A gripping true story, told in tiny snippets, with a backwards and forwards chronology, and the minute attention to detail characteristic of American reportage.

Selected quotes:

• "When Dad was home Mom was as different as a blackbird is to a vampire. Both have wings, but one sucks your blood." (p 25)
• "I'd been having night terrors all the way back to adolescence ... My unconscious strategy for dealing wiht them was to avoid sleep altogether." (p 33)
• "Mom claimed that she was of the 'School of Tough Love', like it was a parenting association that charged membership fees." (p 37)
• "The harder I tried to formulate a coherent thought, the more it eluded me. ... I felt nothing. An emotional lens closed, yet I became acutely aware of any sensory impression." (p 39)
• "These pieces were distinctly layered, as if I could separate one sensation from the other and tape them at different speeds." (p 40) 
• "Every word spoken rang with volume but no meaning." (p 40)
• "The world had gone completely flat" (p 40)
• "I was experiencing sudden paralysis, after which I would collapse. ... I appeared to others to be unconscious whilst being horrifyingly aware that I wasn't. ... I have no way of communicating. After a few minutes, when I feel control coming back, my limbs twitch, my jaw clenches, and if I fight it, the convulsing gets worse. Afterward I am utterly exhausted. ... I felt before these episodes ... emotional detachment, a sense of distance, and maybe fear." (p 90)
•  "Mom said Vivian left him [her husband] because he was cheating on her, which was an act of pure selfishness. Plenty of wives were dealing with cheating husbands in the 1950s, so they took antidepressants." (p 100)
• "These fits of paralysis had similarities to the lucid dream state of night terrors. Instead of being trapped in a dream - terrified and awake, yet clinically asleep - the situation was reversed. I appeared to be unconscious, asleep, even though I was awake and fully aware of my surroundings." (p 113)
• "It made me feel anxious yet affirmed, the way a horrid truth does when it feels right." (p 129)
• "I heard my mother tell whomever was on the other end of the phone that I no longer lived there." (p 162)
• "Charles slept the death of the angels that night." (p 205)
• "I was fifteen minutes late arriving home. Mom was standing at the door, furious. It woulod seem I had been grossly insensitive by worrying her." (p 209)
• "Trying to emotionally connect with Mom for any of us was like trying to fix a broken cup with a glue stick." (p 234)

March 2022; 359 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God