The Escape Artist

by Helen Fremont

A luminous family memoir from the author of the critically acclaimed Boston Globe bestseller, After Long Silence.

In the tradition of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or George Hodgman’s Bettyville, Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on, to both Helen and her older sister, a penchant for keeping their lives neatly, even obsessively compartmentalized, and a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world.

She delves deeply into the family dynamic that produced such a startling devotion to secret keeping, beginning with the painful and unexpected discovery that she has been disinherited in her mother’s will. In scenes that are frank, moving, and often surprisingly funny, Fremont writes about growing up in such an intemperate household, with parents who pretended to be Catholics but were really Jews—survivors of Nazi-occupied Poland. She shares tales of family therapy sessions, disordered eating, her sister’s frequently unhinged meltdowns, and her own romantic misadventures as she tries to sort out her sexual identity.

In a family devoted to hiding the truth, Fremont learns the truth is the one thing that can set you free. Scorching, witty, and ultimately redemptive, The Escape Artist is a powerful contribution to the memoir shelf.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Holocaust, Biography Memoir, History, Biography, Audiobook

352 pages, Hardcover

First published February 11, 2020

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Memoir of family discovery, exploration, and finding resolve and strength in acceptance in a reality that was always present despite denial are among the themes found in “The Escape Artist” (2020) written by Helen Fremont. This is second book in which Fremont has traced the darkness in her family history to the Holocaust: “After Long Silence” (1999) was the first memoir for this award winning NYT bestselling author.

It is shocking enough when Helen and her sister Lara found out that her parents were in fact Jewish, and survivors of the Holocaust. Lara and Helen were raised in an observant Catholic home. It was interesting to note that their mother was unusually close to her sister Zoesha, (who lived in Italy) and encouraged a similar mirror relationship between Lara and Helen. However, there was a problem. Lara, was seriously disturbed, and literally terrorized Helen throughout their life. Lara was permitted to physically and emotionally abuse her sister. Helen would come home from school to find her bedroom trashed, clothing ripped to shreds, and other belongings completely destroyed. There were no consequences or punishment for Lara’s frightening unpredictable rages and attacks. Instead she was given excessive attention and constantly coddled and pampered by her mother. The girl’s father was a busy physician and left management of the household to his wife, preferring to spend most of his free time in his office.
In adulthood, Lara’s devious cruelty and abuse of her sister would continue unchecked, without apology or remorse. Helen does not attempt to earn the readers sympathy in any manner when recalling the attacks and violence against her—she believed for years her sister was ill, and, if she overlooked Lara’s mood swings and hostile toxicity, she hoped that things would be okay or improve. These sisters spent years in therapy--Lara eventually self-diagnosed as a Borderline Personality and became a prominent psychiatrist!

When Helen found herself disowned by her elderly mother following her father’s death (2001), it really didn’t take a rocket scientist to see who was clearly instigating this outrageous maneuver, nor surprising that there was a substantial amount of money involved. Helen would uncover additional family secrets and betrayal’s that her mother desperately tried to hide and cover-up. After Helen’s beloved uncle died in Italy (1988), Zoesha and her mother destroyed his entire office of family archives, personal papers, documents, letters and photographs.
Years later, Helen was contacted by numerous cousins and would learn a great deal more about the mystery associated with her family history-- these facts and stories were absolutely fascinating! Helen Fremont is an attorney that advocates for the rights of domestic violence victim’s, and resides in Boston with her wife. **With thanks to the Seattle Public Library.

[Sherwood Smith]

Back in the seventies, I got to talking with a dour young woman my age, who usually kept herself to herself, interacting little with our fellow schlubs at the studio. But we ended up being the volunteers to hold down the fort in that dead week between Christmas and New Year’s, when the film industry is pretty much a ghost town. She asked why I stayed, and I admitted that I needed the golden time pay as my car had thrown a rod and the engine needed complete rebuilding, then I asked her why she stayed, and to my surprise she answered—said she had nowhere to go, as her family was all on the East Coast, or spread equally far apart.

So we chatted. I don’t remember how we got around to the subject of weddings, but I admitted that the last one I’d been to, I’d been the only goy at a very conservative Jewish wedding, brought as a plus one by one of the wedding party. I ended up sitting by myself pretty much the entire evening; though people were perfectly polite, they didn’t know me, and it was clear that this was a very close-knit community. I ended up people-watching, and admitted that I was pretty sure I could tell the Holocaust survivors among them (I knew there were some) from those who’d grown up in America. There was a tightness in their faces, the grooves carved much harder by silent suffering.

Whereupon she unlocked the gates, and talked about what it was like to be the child of survivors. She, and her siblings, had ended up dispersing as far from home as they could get just to preserve their sanity—though they loved their parents deeply, all the more because there were no other relatives. Everyone else had been gassed, shot, or starved to death.

She ended our conversation by saying that somebody ought to do a study on the second generation of survivors, though nobody would (she said bitterly), partly residual anti-Semitism, but also because that elder generation kept silent. What they went through didn’t come out through stories, but in ways they saw the world, and interacted with it. Including at home.

This incident sprang to mind when I read Helen Fremont’s second memoir here. I hadn’t remembered that I’d read the first one years ago, which I had found problematical. Not the writing, which is superb, but in other ways: for example, it seemed clear that Fremont’s family was not a party to this wish to air the family secrets, and in assumptions like “we were raised Catholic” when it seemed clear that no, Helen and her sister were given the label “Catholic” while growing up, as part of the family disguise. I had been given to understand by Catholic friends that being “raised Catholic” means that the religion is a part of family custom and daily life.

Those issues came back to mind as I read this book, which I thought would be more about her father’s experiences (I really wanted to know how he managed to survive six years in a gulag, a second hammer after the horrors of WW II, and the title, “The Escape Artist”, seemed to hint that that would be the subject) but actually what we get is a caroming back and forth between the far past, present, recent past, childhood, present again, and so on, as Fremont delves more deeply into what is clearly a deeply dysfunctional family.

The book begins with Fremont discovering, shortly after her father’s death, that she has been not just disinherited, but in effect legally declared dead. Though at the funeral, everyone was full of loving words.

And so we launch into the past, and what it was like to grow up in that household full of secrets. Fremont writes such vivid prose, it’s easy to fall right into the book as those secrets come out, some of which may or may not be true.

I had two problems with the book, first the jumping around in time, which kept throwing me out of the narrative, and secondly, Fremont keeps repeating how much they all loved each other, then goes on to detail behaviors that were anything but loving.

But I wouldn’t say these problems are negatives when evaluating the memoir. They were problems that made me more conscious of what I was reading. The fragmentary nature of the story underscores how memory, especially of trauma, can be fragmented, distorted, confused, like those secrets that may or may not be true. Repeating how much they loved each other shows how much they might have wanted to love each other, or maybe this is how it looks when intense emotion binds people together, even when they long to escape. It’s called love, when to someone else it might look more like desperation.

What becomes abundantly clear is that this family is a very vivid example of the long shadow that war casts over the generations left in the detritus.

Copy provided by NetGalley

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 2 out of 5]

In rereading other reviews glowing with praise I wonder, did we read the same book?

In 1999, Helen Fremont wrote After a Long Silence, a successful memoir which reveals that she and Lara, her sister, who had been raised Catholic, didn't discover until 1992 that their parents actually were Polish Jews who managed to escape the Holocaust. Upon the success of this memoir, Fremont's family cut all ties to her which took years to reestablish. I remember enjoying this book when I read it 20 years ago.

But this followup appears to be sort of a Mommie Dearest work due to her fury at being disinherited by both parents. Upon her father's death in 2002 she receives a copy of the will with a codicil claiming she "predeceased" him, and a similar one shows up upon her mother's death 12 years later. Evidently there wasn't a reconnection as strong as Fremont thought. In The Escape Artist she lays out the toxic atmosphere in the home, the demons faced by her and Lara, who suffered from virulent mental illness that remained untreated much of the time. It's a wonder that both women, now in their 60's, attained multiple degrees and have had professional lives.

The problem I had with this book is the great divide between what went on behind closed doors and the claims that they all loved each other very much. Also that there was so much repetition, great reveals that weren't all that surprising, and the fact that Fremont broke the cardinal rule of revealing family secrets for no other reason than just to do so.

[Jan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book of the author's memoirs.

In the first she wrote about how she and her sister discovered as young adults that their parents were Holocaust survivors and that the entire supposed family history was a lie.

I thought that was the gist of it, but there's more. In this second book she writes about the abuse she endured from her older sister as a child in this crazily dysfunctional family, and how, in the end, her parents declared her predeceased and wrote her out of their wills -- the real reason she "escaped" for good.

I thought, after reading the first book, that her family had gotten somehow gotten stuck in their lies -- lies that most survivors threw off once the war was over and they'd found themselves alive. But there was more to it. There were reasons they got stuck. They were still living a fiction and did so their entire lives in order to protect those who'd help them escape and conceal other intricate consequences. They were beholden to the rest of the cast of characters and seemingly owed them the continued deception. They were locked in to lies that distorted them and bent them out of shape for as long as they lived. As the children of the principals, Helen and her sister were inexorably bent to the cause despite being ignorant and innocent.

There's a parable I've already used twice on Goodreads, once in a review and once in comments (I think), and it fits here, too: the one about the man who picks up his new suit at the tailor's and finds it to be remarkably ill-fitting. But the tailor says, the suit's fine, just stand this way, bend this way, and twist that way. Now the man who has distorted himself for the poor-fitting suit looks like he's been run over by a Mack truck, but the suit looks great.

The family looks passable. But the author and her sister are emotional wrecks. Helen is lucky to have disentangled herself to the degree she did.

So the emphasis switches from psychological family drama to uncovering the mystery at the center of it all.

I've been reading a certain sub-genre of memoirs, about authors whose parents had kept secret the fact that they were Jews. And I'd wondered why that sub-genre fascinates me. My parents didn't keep that secret. What this book has helped me figure out, though, is that they did keep secret, to some extent even from themselves, what being Jews meant. They were so busy maintaining that now (after the war), it was a new day, antisemitism was gone as far as good (normal) people were concerned and only remained alive among the ignorant and stupid. I can see why, given they had been born circa 1920, and what I suppose they grew up with. Wishful thinking; that's what it was. And hope.

So here again is one of those stories that one conforms to by distorting oneself.

Conforming is collaboration, but it's unwitting collaboration, since the narrative itself is like the atmosphere: invisible, albeit sometimes perceptible by way of discomfort.

It took me until five or six years into the new century before my eyes were opened, and it felt like a miracle.

I have one more matter to discuss regarding this book, and that's the issue of loyalty. Some people can't stand a memoir or to hear somebody dishing out the family business like this. They think that what goes on in the family should stay in the family (or other group or institution), now and forever. I saw an ugly Goodreads review along those lines, and there are probably more.

Loyalty is important. We couldn't do without it; there's a lot of meanness to be protected from, and there are important norms to be maintained. But also there is a time for escape, a time to straighten up from distortions and grow toward the sun -- not to betray, but to live.

There are deal-breakers.


"And just as a reminder, this is a private board matter, not to be discussed publicly."
Non-Sequitur bt Wiley Miller, 9-1-2020

[Jill Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the mid 1990’s, Boston attorney Helen Fremont discovered that her family was Jewish, rather than Catholic, as she had been told growing up. Her parents were Holocaust survivors and had lost most of the members of their families. Only her mother’s sister had managed to survive by marrying an Italian aristocrat and they were able save Helen’s mother. Helen’s boyfriend also survived, tracked her down in Rome. They married and moved to the United States, settling in upstate New York and raising their two daughters. The father practiced medicine. The Fremont family managed to keep their lives of secrets intact to the outside world. The book Helen Fremont wrote was called “After Long Silence”. I’m giving a bit of the past because Helen Fremont is out with a new memoir called “The Escape Artist”.

In this new book, Fremont unpacks family history much deeper than she does in the first book. Her older sister, now a psychiatrist, had out-of-control mental issues as a teenager and into her adult years. Helen’s parents were largely ineffective in helping “Lara” cope because they didn’t want to let anyone outside their own familial circle know what they were dealing with. In fact, Helen’s mother was incredibly close to her own sister and her family in Rome and she never let them in on family problems.

Looking back, Fremont thinks the lying and secrecy her family indulged in made the family unable to cope with any problems. The two girls- Helen and her sister- certainly had a yin-yang relationship. They often went months and even years without speaking, BUT also had long periods where they were best friends. Helen had similar relationships with her parents. In fact, we learn early on that her parents and sister had cut Helen out of her parents’ wills, declaring her legally “predeceased”.

Fremont’s book is an interesting read. She holds nothing back, though disguises people and events. I’m going to review a bit later another new book I read called “My City of Dreams”, by Lisa Gruenberg, which is also first generation memoir. Look for it if interested.

[Mary Novaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Escape Artist is astonishingly frank in its illustration of mental illness and realistic about the shortcomings of treatment and the unpredictability of mental health. The dysfunction in Fremont's family is a powerful reminder of how "secrets keep us sick." The authors parents, Jewish Holocaust survivors pretending to be Roman Catholics, are such victims of their own trauma that they can't begin to meet the emotional needs of their daughters. As in so many maladjusted families where mental illness and/or addiction are present, everything revolves around the sickest person, while others suffer the resulting neglect.

Early on, Fremont divulges that she has been disinherited by her family, which begs the question as to whether this is a memoir of revenge. It's certainly a "tell all" when it comes to the author's sister and, although Fremont is fairly open about her own depression and anxiety, she lacks a certain vulnerability that's necessary for me to completely empathize. And, other than Fremont's explanation that they are sisters after all, bonded by blood and family, I couldn't grasp why the author kept reconciling when her sister had so blatantly and frequently abused her. That said, I kept turning the pages...

The author clearly is adept at storytelling and her prose flows easily. But another place this memoir breaks down for me is the lack of explanation of how the author's sister, who is painted as extremely mentally ill, managed to even earn a high school diploma, let alone attend a Seven Sisters college and ultimately become an M.D. with a speciality in -- surprise! -- psychiatry. Having personal knowledge of situations with much milder illness, it's hard to fathom how highly functioning the sister could be when she was so violent and tormented much of the time. I got a bit stuck on this and, for me, it put a bit of a ding in the book's credibility.

There were a few other missing pieces for me and a bit too much "telling" when I wanted more "showing." For instance, Fremont tells us the sister gets along well with colleagues at the hospital, but I'd have liked a few scenes that illustrated that to contrast the irrational behavior she exhibited with her family. While she talks about it, Fremont, holds back on her own passion. She goes from having tame crushes on some women friends and eventually realizes she is a lesbian, but there's not really an emotional catharsis, and then suddenly she has a partner. I also would've liked a little more about the fact both Fremont and her sister are gay. That seems unusual enough to warrant more than casual mention. And how did the parents react? What were their feelings about homosexuality?

The Escape Artist is a fascinating read in many ways, but it left me with enough unanswered questions to be slightly frustrating in the end.

[lfreaton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. At times poetic enough to finish. Had high hopes but found the actual read rather self-indulgent. That this author continued to forgive her family its sadism was the most stunning of all. I would have left them behind by age 13. First memoir I have read in years and decidedly convinced me to return to fiction my next read. Not entirely a waste of time but certainly better suited to the whiny Sylvia Plath types still unpsychoanalyzed and looking to punish their families all their transgressions any unavoidable intergenerational transmission of trauma.

[Mary K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Fremont’s first book and this one was great, also. Fremont’s first book was her story of learning about her family; the kids her parents had told her all of her life. In this sequel, she begins with her discovery that she’s been disowned by her parents. Fremont then dogs back into her past, telling of her relationship with a sister she both adores and fears. Beautifully written. Heartbreaking story.

[LAPL Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are many factual accounts of people who have survived and lived through torture, terrorist attacks, wars, genocides. Many survivors go on to live productive, successful lives, but suffer residual emotional and psychological trauma that are not obvious to them or to others. In this sequel to After long silence: a memoir, Helen Fremont writes about those very effects that are not visible to anyone outside a family. She and her sister were raised as secular Catholics, but uncovered the facts about her parents’ past lives during World War II. They were Jewish and Holocaust survivors. Her father survived six years in the Soviet Gulag, and her mother escaped Poland to Italy with the help of a young Italian, who disguised her as a young soldier.

Six weeks after her father's death, Fremont received a legal doument stating she had been disowned by her family. There was a codicil to the will, declaring her to have "predeceased" her father. This was the impetus that began another search for meaning and facts about her family's torutured and torturing lives. Told in sequential format that begins with early childhood memories, she lays bare the confusing, alarming and contradictory family life of four people: father, mother and two sisters. Both parents ingrained in their daughters the paramount importance of secrecy. Even when the mental breakdown of her sister forced the family to get professional guidance, each family member did not factually present the family dynamics. The family did not have the fortitude and ability to do that. Their survival, over a horrendous past life, had inflicted so much damage that they were incapable of reflection. It would awaken the very memories they had buried under secrets, in order to be alive. At the time her family was going through therapy, the concept of PTSD was not known and/or considered, and her family's outbursts during sessions were professionaly qualified as only "borderline" psychological issues.

As Fremont unearths her family's trauma and secrets, she gradually dislodges herself from them, at times at great cost. It is a painful, horrific memoir that includes her wonderful ironic sense of humor and wit. Her parents were caught in multiple layers of self-deception and psychological trauma that did great but unintentional damage to their two daughters. Fremont is the one who was able to face the past and move on, but not without personal hurt that she acknowledges has given her the courage to face the truth.

For Holocaust survivors and their children, the denial of being Jewish is not that uncommon. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright did not know until adulthood that her family was Jewish. Journalist Kati Marton was raised as a Catholic, and did not know about her Jewish ancestry. These denials of one's religion and culture were deemed necessary by those whose families had been persecuted and killed because of being Jewish. It was a type of self-defense innoculation against further hateful persecution and what it could engender. Holocaust survivors are not the only ones who deny or do not want to talk about their past experiences with family or friends, and include the following: combat soldiers from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, combat in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. They lived it, and do not want to relive it, or inflict the memory of those experiences on others.

Helen Fremont's memoir is one of those rare books that I could not put down.

Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & Fiction

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir of Helen's childhood through adulthood where family secrets about past events, as well as mental illness, shaped the entire family.

I always feel a bit odd when I say I enjoyed reading a book like this. The author went through so many hardships, and her relations with her family had so many ups and screeching downs, that 'enjoy' has to be understood in context of being hooked into the story.

I don't have siblings, so this was kind of like a peek into the unhealthy relationships that can occur. Helen's not sure if her sister Lara is mentally ill, or if maybe she herself is. The book is a page-turner: you keep wanting to see what happens next, and hoping that Helen comes out happy and whole at the end.

[Weina · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some books, memoirs and novels and nonfiction, that you read a paragraph and you just know this is a gift coming from a talented writer. The Escape Artist is one of those books. As a historical fiction writer, I was drawn to this book completely, reading each sentence, awed at those subtle but powerful metaphors. I feel bad to say this, considering the trauma and the pain the writer has experienced, but I really enjoyed this memoir, the skewed dynamics of the sisters, the clench of the mother, and yes, the intimate and exquisite writing.

[Meg Lelvis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style was smooth, but she narrator jumped around in time so much, it was hard to keep track of what year she was in.
For some reason, I didn't like any of the four main characters, and it was never clear about the sister's mental problems/diagnoses.
At least the reader feels the frustration of the writer, but I became weary of reading about four screwed-up people. The book does raise the question of secrets, right-to-know, and privacy...where is the boundary?

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. For me, this was a white-knuckle read. What would be the consequences of telling all? What are the consequences of telling MORE? For dysfunctional siblings everywhere.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this memoir of an extremely dysfunctional family. It's always comforting to have evidence that yours is not the only one! There's some history here and quite a bit of psychology, as our writer recounts her angst-ridden (with good reason) childhood and early adulthood, heavily influenced by an episodically mentally ill sister and parents who had their own issues, not to mention significant secrets. Well-written and paced, I couldn't stop turning the pages. There is even an interesting twist near the end I didn't see coming at all. One of the best memoirs I've read. My only slight disappointment is that Fremont didn't share more information about Donna. She simply appears with very little backstory or elaboration. For such a significant person in Fremont's life, she gets short shrift. Perhaps that was at Donna's request.

[Barbara Nutting · Rating 5 out of 5]

I consider the Robison family (Augusten Burroughs etc) to be the most dysfunctional group of people I have ever read about, but the Fremont family runs a very close second!! Amazing how many similarities there are threaded through these two mentally deranged families.

Googled the Rubin vase, interesting concept as applied to the book.

I can’t conceive such a relationship between sisters - I would have ceased speaking to her as a teenager. All those negative vibes bring nothing but trouble. Lara sounds like a classic bipolar case to me, rages, depression and suicide attempt are not normal.

Very well written, have her After Long Silence on my TBR list.

10/30/2020 Just a personal note
If possible, read After Long Silence first

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely unputdownable. Helen Fremont is the Mary Karr of the north - telling a story at times so sad it made me dizzy, with compassion, wisdom, and (believe it or not) amazing wit. I feel I understand human beings in a new way after reading this book.

[E.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stay tuned for my review in the Wellesley College alumnae magazine! Spoiler alert: I loved it.

[Ava Butzu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe it's because I'm the younger sister in a family of two siblings. Maybe it's because we are the daughters of a holocaust survivor. Maybe it's because I, too, am the escape artist who blocked out the trauma of growing up in an emotionally fraught, volatile home. In any case, I could hardly stop reading Helen Fremont's memoir, "The Escape Artist," and I felt the intensity of the emotions almost viscerally as she plumbed the darkest depths of her past to shed some light on how history is inextricably linked to our understanding of ourselves.

The book begins when Helen is middle aged at the moment when she learns that her father's will was amended just days before his death, declaring that Helen "predeceased" him and that her sister was the sole survivor and inheritor. Effectively "dead" to her remaining family, Helen begins to unlock the secrets that led to this cruel erasing of her life by those who loved her most.

Fremont's family secrets, unknown to her for most of her life, were the unknown enemy, the unseen aggressor who, though not palpable, visited indelible damage upon her daily existence and memories. While her mother narrowly escaped Hitler's genocide that obliterated the rest of her family in Poland, her father inexplicably escaped after enduring 6 years in the gulag, and against all odds, the two reunited in Italy under the guise of being Catholic. They took this new identity with them to the United States, where this secret prevailed, but under which even worse heartbreak and loss bubbled to the surface.

Fremont tells her story in vivid detail: how her sister's borderline personality disorder went undiagnosed, but wrought terrible violence and anger on herself and, in particular, Helen. How Helen, the "normal one," retreated into herself out of self-preservation, resulting in eating disorders, inexplicable anxiety, and confusion about her sexuality.

"The Escape Artist," in less-adept, less self-aware hands, might have demonized those who did the most harm to Helen. But in Fremont's narrative, she explores her own role in perpetuating secrets, burying the past, and pretending to be something she is not.This is when fact is stranger than fiction, but Fremont has almost surgically diagnosed the causes and effects of each major episode that she recounts, making it an honest and thoughtful reflection - more than just a good story.

[Smbergin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Escape Artist

After giving myself a day or two to decompress upon completing The Escape Artist, I dethroned Education on the top of my Goodreads/Listopia of Memoirs that are better than fiction.

Helen Fremont’s parents were Holocaust survivors, living through the absolute unimaginable. Her father had a physical limitation resulting from the abuse he endured and regularly suffered from night terrors. Her mother was would often lament that she wished she had died in the camps, and it seemed the only thing that brought her solace was daily correspondence and periodic visits with her sister, who lived in Italy.

Helen’s older sister, Lara, was mentally ill and physically, verbally, and psychologically abusive to Helen. The household revolved around Lara’s state-of-mind, and rather than protecting Helen from the abuse, the attention and focus went to pacifying Lara. The family bonded together in keeping their turmoil to themselves. Helen thought that the secrets they were hiding were about Lara’s mental illness and the abuse she meted out but later discovered her parents had been lying and keeping secrets from the girls too.

The abuse and insanity Helen endured and concealed took a toll on her emotional stability. She suffered bouts of depression, eating disorders, and suicidal ideations. She struggled with her sexual identity. Both Lara and Helen were extremely bright, one on track to become a doctor and the other a lawyer. When Lara wasn’t forcefully pushing Helen away, they were the best of friends, and enjoyed hiking and running together, and bonding over their suicidal thoughts.

Sisterhood, lies, and an inability to break a disastrous cycle were significant themes in the book. Unfortunately for Helen, the cycle comes to an abrupt halt when Helen’s father dies. She thought they were in a healing phase, only to discover her father amended his will to erase her from their lives. Worse yet, her mother facilitated the act, and her sister was likely complicit, although neither uttered a word during the funeral and weeks following. Helen’s pain and confusion are palpable and now live inside me.

The Escape Artist is Helen’s second biography, and I’ve added After Long Silence to my TBR pile. Thank you, Helen Fremont, for sharing your harrowing story, and NetGalley and Gallery Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Tika McDonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dramatic, whiney, repetitive. Terrible.

[Abby Howell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dang. I really wanted to like this book more than I did. Memoir about growing up in a dysfunctional family and most particularly with a sister with many mental health challenges. The writing was good enough, often solid, but I really wanted Fremont to dig deeper into herself and her own motivations than she did. Too often it was just a surface recounting of the story. We are not with her in the story; we are just watching it go by. And the story got very repetitive. I wanted to know more about the "why", not just the "what". It's not a bad read, but not what I was looking for.

[Helen Epstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Escape Artist is a fast-paced psychological thriller as well as a shattering account of growing up in a family that has survived genocide and refused to acknowledge it.” -- Helen Epstein, bestselling author of Children of the Holocaust and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed her first book....but this reads as a “poor me” story. Couldn’t wait it be done with it

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed this book I kept wondering whose narrative was true. I’d like to hear the story from Laura’s perspective.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty boring honestly

[Chelsea · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not easy, as the author has demonstrated, to speak out the truth about one's past without feeling like those who caused problems (or at least were there with you), will not suffer too or again, and we really don't want that to happen. Not really.

As adults, many of us are not generally looking for revenge when writing a memoir about a traumatic past but looking more for a healing, a closure of sorts. Took a lot of courage for this book (and the one she wrote before) to be written and published, and not just the courage of the author but her family as well.

While reading, my own family situation surfaced in my memory, of course, the family who raised me, and how I too someday could write a healing memoir to finally close that painful part of my life and just go on without the pain around my neck.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

You only think your family is dysfunctional. This is the 50+ year untangling of a family’s secrets which caused enormous pain for its members. The secret birth of a son born out of wedlock intermingled with World War II and the morals of a generation of what was perceived to be acceptable. It must be read to be believed. Ultimately, the question I have is why the mother didn’t seek help?

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hits incredibly close to home. I don't understand generational trauma, but I believe it to be true.

[Juni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what brought this book to my attention. I wish there was a "notes" field in Goodreads to track such things.

What a gut punch this story was. It mirrored that of my brother and I to a degree I found wrenching, from the childhood torture, the hairpin turns in behaviour and attitude, the probable mental illnesses of one or more family members, and the manipulation of wills to cut people out of the picture. I'm left enraged at her situation and my own at the end of the book.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75. Man, Helen’s family put a capital D on Dysfunctional family. She outted everyone —revengeful or truth seeker? You choose