Licking the Knife: a Memoir by Sabrina Capper is horrifying, infuriating, and deeply upsetting. It is also very well written, riveting, and uncompromising. Capper’s use of a first-person narrative – in both her adult voice and the voice of her childhood self – puts the reader in the center of every story. Capper’s spare use of imagery (the ooze moving inside me) provides just enough well-chosen detail to allow the reader’s mind to fill in the rest of the picture and force us to picture things that we would rather not.
In equal measure, Capper uses the same deftness of detail to describe those who showed her kindness and aid: a fierce and loving stepmother; a caring, professional therapist; a loving if oblivious father; and mental health professionals dealing tough love to severely traumatized patients. And although this is a story where there is no punishment for evil deeds, those with empathy - those who hear Ms. Capper’s descriptions of abuse at the hands of her family and believe unconditionally – they are the ones that help bring Capper back to her true self.
“But, I didn’t do anything wrong!” That statement is a running theme throughout the book. Whether losing a job because of CEO malfeasance or trying to read the motivations of grown-ups to avoid abuse, the notion that there is some formula to being safe is a driving impulse for Capper. Capper describes her adult self as having striven all her life to attain an upper middle-class lifestyle that allows her to relax in the safety of having money and security. In the first chapter, a description of an idealized family vacation to New York City, she describes the safety of wealth, knowing you have enough money to not worry about travel inconveniences. She paints a picture of her idyllic family and their vacation together as something that she built and earned through force of will. A life of safety built by bending herself and the world to be as she wants it. In some passages, it’s almost too braggadocios in tone and even a little off-putting.
However, the Ms. Capper on vacation with her family, successful and happy though she is, turns out to be a kind of armor that was carefully crafted as protection against trauma. As Ms. Capper’s life begins to unravel, first with the loss of her job and later by an unexpected visit from her family, that life of safety and the striving woman who built it turn out to be a façade. As Capper’s childhood memories begin to surface, young Sabrina and her “Littles” reveal the ugly truths that turned an artistic, precocious girl into the driven, striving, perfectionist adult.
For example, Ms. Capper can carry out the unethical directions of CEOs because the safety of being indispensable at her job is more important than pushing back about ethics. Her childhood reveals a little girl perpetually concerned with doing whatever she must to keep those she loves and, hopefully herself, safe. Sabrina is someone who is unable to comprehend the cycle of her abuse. She strategizes all the time, her mind constantly trying to unlock a formula of actions that will save her, prevent further abuse, or mitigate the pain and accumulating damage. Both adult and child will do anything to be safe.
To escape the debilitating effects of the flood of repressed memories finally reaching the surface, Capper recounts her struggle to integrate the childhood Sabrina with the adult Ms. Capper. The moments of loving compassion from those that genuinely care for her when she is at her lowest are a cathartic relief after the deeply unsettling childhood accounts. The book illustrates the power of simply having someone believe you and care for you. Even for the reader, those moments quell some of the rage and allow the floodgates to open, the tears to finally flow.
Licking the Knife is a difficult read. Its subject matter is concisely and starkly written. Capper tells the truth of her experience methodically – mostly, just the facts until the emotions uncomfortably squirm their way in peppering logical reasoning with the haunting imagery of a mind trying to create a visual language for the unspeakable.
I would like to say that Licking the Knife is poorly written or sensationalized or hyperbolic or has some other unforgivable flaw. I cannot. The book deserves to be read (I recommend reading it in shifts). It has deep themes, some of which the author may not even realize. It is ripe for analysis and stays with the reader long after the last page is turned. If there is more to this story, and I suspect there is, I hope the remaining tale is told with the same unflinching light of truth that makes Licking the Knife so challenging and exceptional.