Reviews for Rescuing Patty Hearst: Growing Up Sane in a Decade Gone Mad

The average rating for Rescuing Patty Hearst: Growing Up Sane in a Decade Gone Mad based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-07-05 00:00:00 Lori Rudd I'm a little late on this book review, as I finished this a couple of weeks ago, but here goes. This book is set in the mid-1970s'just around the time that Patty Hearst was abducted'and centers on the author's mother's late-developing schizophrenia and attempt to set up a camp for a "secret army" of children to be trained. This memoir is a fascinating portrayal of mental illness'schizophrenia'and the ways in which we are adopted into (sucked into) our parents' issues and disabled lives. As a matter of fact, the reader is led to believe that at points Virginia Holman as a child narrator actually believes that her mother's "secret army" will come to fruition. Holman's tone throughout the memoir'switching from her 1970s childhood to present-day 2000'was near pitch-perfect, though I was disappointed that there were fewer present-day chapters as the chronology of the narrative sped up. And though I quite enjoyed this memoir (as much as you can enjoy reading about schizophrenia), I did feel that the build-up of the "secret army" was a bit of a letdown'and I never understood why. Why a "secret army"? What war? Maybe the author can't answer those questions herself, for the book is as much the author's search for the truth as it is a narrative. And because the buildup of the "secret army" never goes anywhere, the middle of this book becomes slower, as the author's mother attempts to act normal when her husband moves into the cabin with them. I also think there's not enough Patty Hearst references in this memoir to justify the title, which means that the title itself becomes a gimmick for the reader to buy the book. It's a bit of a letdown even for me, though I knew at the beginning that this was a memoir about a childhood under the spell of a schizophrenic mother. Still, this was a really good memoir'and fascinating for its psychological insights. Early on, Holman explains, "Schizophrenics hear voices. Now understand that unlike the voice you hear in your head telling you to remember to take your child to soccer practice at five o'clock, these voices, though they come from the brain, sound as if they come from outside. These voices are as loud and unpredictable as someone else's stereo. It's not like being possessed; it's like being assaulted and enslaved." And I must confess that towards the end I worried'in true pseudo-hypochondriac fashion'if I might end up a schizophrenic, too.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-05 00:00:00 Lemonica Stamps The my-family-was-crazy memoir ought to be a separate genre in itself -- there certainly are enough of them. "Rescuing Patty Hearst" is a pretty good example. The secret to Virginia Holman's success is that she keeps chapters simple and short, letting the reader (for the most part) pass judgment on her mother's actions. The end result is a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a woman who created a nearly untenable childhood for this feisty author. Having grown up in the same era as Holman, I especially liked the way the 1970s became both a metaphor for her mother's insanity, and a possible reason for it. (Martha Mitchell was right about the secret government war -- why not Molly?) Maybe "Watergatesque" should join "Kafkaesque" as a byword for a government gone mad.