Review: An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir by Ariel Leve

4 stars for An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir by Ariel Leve.

Reading this book feels like reading a book of revelations. It is a shout-out to the world, to seek understanding both within and without, for the way the author is wired. Certainly, author Ariel Leve has a most unusual childhood, unusual being the understatement. It is hard to fathom how she survives the years to adulthood the way she has had.

This memoir also makes me think about my relationship with my own mother. I see parallels in the behaviour of my mother and that of the author's. They cannot help themselves. Or can they? I can only tell myself that we don't get to choose our parents and parents don't get to choose their children. But we do get to choose how hard we are willing to work to make the best of what we are given.

This book reminds us that a house is not a home. And a family is not everything, mettā (loving-kindness) is. Sometimes, most times, to be happy is to be simple and content. And peace will follow naturally.


Publisher: Harper
Publication date: 14 Jun 2016

@}--->>--->>-----

A beautiful, startling, and candid memoir about growing up without boundaries, in which Ariel Leve recalls with candor and sensitivity the turbulent time she endured as the only child of an unstable poet for a mother and a beloved but largely absent father, and explores the consequences of a psychologically harrowing childhood as she seeks refuge from the past and recovers what was lost.

Ariel Leve grew up in Manhattan with an eccentric mother she describes as “a poet, an artist, a self-appointed troublemaker and attention seeker.” Leve learned to become her own parent, taking care of herself and her mother’s needs. There would be uncontrolled, impulsive rages followed with denial, disavowed responsibility, and then extreme outpourings of affection. How does a child learn to feel safe in this topsy-turvy world of conditional love?

Leve captures the chaos and lasting impact of a child’s life under siege and explores how the coping mechanisms she developed to survive later incapacitated her as an adult. There were material comforts, but no emotional safety, except for summer visits to her father’s home in South East Asia—an escape that was terminated after he attempted to gain custody. Following the death of a loving caretaker, a succession of replacements raised Leve—relationships which resulted in intense attachment and loss. It was not until decades later, when Leve moved to other side of the world, that she could begin to emancipate herself from the past. In a relationship with a man who has children, caring for them yields clarity of what was missing.

In telling her haunting story, Leve seeks to understand the effects of chronic psychological maltreatment on a child’s developing brain, and to discover how to build a life for herself that she never dreamed possible: An unabbreviated life.

*Blurb from Goodreads*

Add to:


Links to purchase: