My Life as a Multiple
by Cameron West
I thought this book looked interesting. Picked up from the same time and place (probably the same shelf even) as Aftershock. It\’s a firsthand account of a man suffering from dissociative personality disorder. He had twenty-four different personalities. I read almost sixty pages before the first suggestion of child abuse arose, that of incest. From his grandmother. I knew there was going to be more, and probably more graphic, descriptions of the incidents from his childhood and I just didn\’t want to read about that. It\’s too much for me. Plus, I was bored by all the descriptions – by brand name- of his expensive possessions and the flat, uninteresting writing style. Curious what others had said about this book, I looked at some of the Amazon reviews. This one describes it pretty well: \”This book must contain the largest collection of bad metaphors ever published.\”
Abandoned 319 pages, 1999
5 Responses
It\’s really too bad this book was disappointing. It is an interesting premise. I\’ve always found dissociative disorder interesting. I remember reading Sybil and another book (whose title eludes me at the moment), based on true stories about similar experiences.
I never heard of Sybil until I read those Amazon reviews- a lot of them mentioned Sybil as being a better book about similar subject. Perhaps I should go look for it.
I\’ve not read Sybil, but I\’ve seen the movie with Sally Field. It was years ago, but I remember it as being powerful.I\’m with you — I couldn\’t have finished this one. At least the title is clever.
It\’s such a shame this book didn\’t work, the title alone seems very interesting.
Yikes!! I agree with verbivore that the title makes the book seem like a compelling read. Poor guy probably could have used some help from a better editor…we\’re not all born writers.