Reviews of The Laid Daughter ...
The Chorus May/June 1999
by Donita Lukich
The courage it took for Helen
Bonner, a college professor, to open up her life, using her journals and
photo albums, is amazing. She tells her story and withholds nothing. Many
incest survivors were conditioned at early ages to keep the secrets of their
perpetrators, led to believe that we were conspirators in sexual activity.
Telling our stories is not always safe. However, Bonner tells it all. The Laid Daughter demonstrates
feelings and beliefs that are very common among incest abuse survivors ---
dissociations, flashbacks, nightmares, unlovable/inadequate feelings,
suppression or repression of memories, and even MPD (Multiple Personality
Disorder). Bonner's work serves to "normalize" these symptoms. After reading
the book, survivors may not feel so strange for experiencing them. The
Laid Daughter is an excellent
educational tool for professionals, graduate students, survivors and the
general public.
The Healing Woman Oct. l996
by Aubrieta V. Hope
In the pages of Helen Bonner's compelling story, I glimpsed a child, a very
bright child who survived devastating abuse. Creative and daring, the child
speaks in dreams and journal entries. Because the author writes from an
adult perspective, the child remains in the shadows, around the corner,
between the lines. But she no longer searches a dark house. For Helen Bonner
has lifted years of confusion surrounding the humiliating sexual abuse and
terrifying physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her father and
mother. She tells about recovering and healing traumatic childhood memories,
yet hers is not simply a book about incest. Only a few paragraphs scattered
throughout the book directly recount sexually abusive events. The
Laid Daughter is an uncompromisingly honest story about overcoming, achieving, and growing.
"Like a detective, I went through a cardboard box of tattered, handwritten
journals, kept for years, looking for connections." A good book.
VOICES newsletter,
The Chorus, Oct. l996
Phyllis Froehle
This is an incest story ... with a different viewpoint. Helen saw herself as
like the daughter of Leda in mythology, a woman taken by Zeus in the
disguise of a swan. She asks herself if, like Helen of Troy, she sees her
father as a God who has power over her. One of the story's appeals to me is
that Helen is in her later years, like me, before she addresses the fact
that her life is out of control. The intervening years are filled by broken
marriages, numerous relationships with men and dysfunctional relationships
with children. I particularly admire her honesty about even the sexual
exploits of her life, which I believe are a problem for many of us
survivors. Helen's descriptions of her progress toward wholeness ring bells
of familiarity. This book would be very encouraging for younger men and
women too. One chapter, American Auschwitz, describes her attendance at the
l993 conference and its effect on her. VOICES is proud to have had Helen
Bonner as one of its presenters at the Indianapolis Conference.
The Pioneer, Bemidji,
MN. Sept 13, l995
Louise Mengelkoch
Writers who publish confessional memoirs walk a fine line between
embarrassing self-absorption and courageous honesty with a universal
message. Throw in sex as the central issue, and the fine line almost
disappears. Helen Bonner manages to walk that fine line. Her book is
compelling, horrifying and, in the end, illuminating. Bonner says she wrote
the book to counter the current notion that false memories are being
rampantly implanted in millions of people by unscrupulous therapists. Her
book does that and a lot more. Her decades of diligent journal entries
provide solid evidence --- tortured dreams, everyday experiences and some
fine short stories -- all written without conscious knowledge of the incest. As she sifts through her past, we root for the younger Bonner as she
alternately struggles to learn the truth and shrinks from it.
Bonner is at her best when she retells her narrative with honesty and
salient detail, such as this scene from her childhood: "The house smelled of
furniture polish, and my father's shoes made white marks on the waxed
floors. Mother always kept house like that, everything ironed, even the
sheets, even our underwear." Now Bonner should know why she saved those
puzzle pieces. Her instincts, despite her troubled life, were sound. It took
all her accumulated skills as a woman, a lover, a mother, an academic and a
writer to fit those pieces together so they make a clear, beautiful picture.
Out of her pain has come something eloquent.
