Word: tormenting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...BOTTOM LINE: A novel of manners that artfully reveals the hidden torment of a man who never quite belonged...
Most abused children suffer quietly. The lucky ones find other supportive adults who nurture them, typically a nonabusive parent, grandparent, teacher or coach. Some manage to cope by emotionally numbing themselves or by taking out their repressed anger on someone other than the abuser. Others find the torment intolerable. They may run away or try to commit suicide. Donna Marie Wisener once had a gun in her mouth when she was discovered by her father, who told her, "Next time do it right...
...contains, among other matters, madness, incest, something very close to fratricide and an abortion the consequences of which reverberate down the years. All of this is reflected in Crick's face and manner -- full of suppressed torment -- and in the eerie, sweetly stated hysteria of his barren wife, Mary (Sinead Cusack), who endures false pregnancies and indulges in kidnapping in an attempt to fulfill her need for motherhood...
...performed as early as the tenth week. Neither procedure is without risk, however, and when either succeeds in pinpointing a genetic defect, it forces would-be parents to make a terrible choice: Do they raise a child who might have a serious congenital affliction? Or do they suffer the torment and pain that accompanies an abortion...
Jacob, unlike his parents and sister, rarely appears as more than a sketched figure. He seems not to have a life, but merely a function: to set off the family torment, so the author can take notes. Carolyn dutifully worries now and then about how the parents of the dead girl are feeling, but mostly the troubled family's misery is airless. The legal and psychological entanglement seems oddly phantasmagorical, lacking independent reality. As an expression of parental dread, of being trapped and unable to help one's children in a situation of vaguely defined horror, the fears are vivid...