Reeling & Writhing

The author describes the bitter court battle over the custody of her two young children, and her decision, when the court awards custody to the children's abusive father, to take them and start a new life in another state under an alias

Presenting a merciless dissection of her marriage of 30 years ago to a scholarly but domineering, jealous and womanizing husband, Lawrence recalls her escape from emotional and sexual abuse, and her recovery of a personal identity. Although she writes lyrically of nature and her children, her acerbic portraits of academics, and use of prose that verges on the turgid to express rage at men's mistreatment of women, seems at times to justify her husband's quoted remark that she "had no gift for happiness." The decision of the court to award custody of the couple's two children to the father rather than to Lawrence drove her to kidnap her children on two occasions--the second time successfully--and to a new life under a new identity.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author of this sad, beautifully written autobiography uses not just a pen name but a false name, chosen in the late summer of 1965 as a new identity to hide herself and her two children from her abusive, sadistic husband. In her former identity as Giershe, an intelligent graduate student in the late 1940s, the author met and wed David Kinnard, who was studying to be a scholar, "that most arduous of professions." From the beginning, their relationship was troubled: David wanted to know everything Giershe thought, wrote, or did; Giershe felt the couple's problems, whatever they were, were her fault. The book follows the pair to a small town in Connecticut, where David accepts a professorship. Two children are born, and David flaunts numerous affairs while Giershe tries to cope. When David makes known his sexual intents toward his daughter, Olivia, Giershe leaves him. Her account includes letters, court documents, and diary entries detailing the heartrending court decisions in favor of the husband that eventually forced Giershe into hiding with her children. Lawrence writes elegant, taut prose; her sorrowful book leaves readers longing for an epilogue, something to provide a happy ending. Eloise Kinney