Books on abuse...too much???

I totally get what you're saying.

Quick reaction -- commodification = trivialization. And it ain't trivial.

Yeppers....and yet, literature is a really common and potentially very good way to pick at problems and make people aware of them.....

Yeah, I agree. I think that each individual who writes a book has a reason to, and should -- but any odor of "flavor of the month" when applied to this subject is off-putting.

I agree that to the capitalist, "hot" current topics become commodities which they hope to sell. As for the subject of trivialization, it is my experience of the mass-marketing concept that it cannot distinguish between what is profound and what is trivial. Marketers are only concerned with what sells, and not the relative worth of the subject.

I've kind of got more of an idea about what worried me.

I think it's something about kind of saturating the place with stories of abuse, and when this is justified and when not.

Thing is, there's a lot of very traumatised and vulnerable people out there, who may, or may not, have experienced the kind of abuse written about (there are factors short of florid abuse which can create extreme vulnerability.)

One of the things that can happen to such people (given the proven unreliability of memory over long periods, even in good circumstances) is that such stories can affect their memories, and be taken on as their own story, and get embroidered upon.


I think there's been a good example of this in relation to the Mulligan Inquiry into abuse in care that has recently occurred here. I have no doubt that many kids were abused in orphanages, residential care, and orphanages, some very badly.

However, just the trauma and disruption that leads to kids being placed in such places is so bad in and of itself, plus the effect of living in such places, that I am pretty sure that, for some of the most vulnerable in this group, the fact that there was so much publicity leading up to the inquiry has encouraged "memories" of truly horiffic abuse (eg some have claimed to recall kids being murdered, though, so far, there does not seem to be good evidence of this) which may not have occurred...a bit like the ritual abuse craze that swept the US (which had markedly less effect in Oz and virtually none in the UK).


It's kind of like how well meaning mass education about youth suicide reliably leads to an increase in youth suicides for a time.


At the moment, at least in my city, there is a bit of an abuse craze happening.....mainly focussing on sexual abuse, because that seems to be more of a hot button issue for the media etc (often meaning that knee-jerk stuff around that happens, leaving out the less "sexy" but also extremely damaging areas of emotional abuse and neglect, and physical abuse)....so perhaps this informed my response?


I think there is a part of me that worries about all this fiction as being voyeurism......but that's not much different from lots of other fiction, is it?

Voyeurism. Un huh. I dropped an author from my reading list that I used to like very well. It got to the point where Piers Anthony couldn't write about anything but the abuse of children in its many forms, except maybe in his Xanth stories, which were too pun laden to bother with.

I had a similar experience to the one Roger describes with Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down. I saw The Plague Dogs, and got that and read it, and was rather surprised by how much darker and more cynical it was. Then i read Shardik, which was horrible, and then picked up Maia, which was even worse. Seemingly out of nowhere, child abuse and child slavery leaps into the story line of Shardik, and it's pretty ugly. Maia is part of the same "Beklan Empire" series, and is even worse. It starts with the title character, who is then 14, bathing in a river, while her step-father, hidden, looks on and lusts for her. He then sells her to slavers, and she is taken to a house of prostitution in the capital. I put it down and didn't attempt to finish it. I've had no interest in his writing since that time.

When going through the aisles even, searching out books on the subject, there was some stuff that bothered me too dlowan.

Some bookstores and places better than others. Some books better than others.

And when you are the person looking for info, support, and something to relate to etc etc. - not all the books and places are exactly helpful. Actually can shake a person up worse than anything.

I read a lot of different things over the last few years, and some of the books were just Wow. Some of the descriptions - ok, is this to help or is this meant to tittilate.

Some is sure walking that fine line. Some walk right over it - yet those books are in the section for self help or therapy/abuse/disease.

The maze for people looking for real help and information is pretty crazy. Little mines left where people are hoping to find some safety.

Yep...triggering for no good end is a worry.