The Escape Artist
By: Helen Fremont / Narrated By: Gabra Zackman
Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
So “unsparing” that Fremont should feel some sense of shame…
Really, when my husband clipped the article in the New York Times about this book and it’s author, Helen Fremont, I was captivated by Fremont’s parents’ story. I mean, telling their two children that they were Roman Catholics and not saying ANYthing about being Holocaust survivors and a survivor of a Siberian Gulag? WOW! But I was equally taken in by why on earth Fremont’s father should disown her right before his death from Parkinson’s. Surely, thought I: This would be a memoir truly remarkable and maybe even unsparing.
Uhm, like, NOBODY in her family is spared her wrath, and she comes out not so much loving and self-aware as other reviewers have raved, as having a most definite axe to grind, all whilst being a Victim of the lowest sort.
We kinda sorta fell into doing this one for our little audiobook club, and we got it done and reviewed in the single week: NONE of us wanted it on our plates for longer than that. My mom disliked it—could not for the life of her see that there was love anywhere; my sister haaaaated it—saw it as a bitter woman cashing in big; and me? I jacked my normal x1.25 listening speed up to x2 to get her whinging and bile spewing over with.
What will you hear when you listen to it? Mostly about how nuts her sister was and how she had everyone walking on eggshells with her Borderline Personality Disorder. I do give Fremont credit for her offering that, as first-born child, her sister bore all burdens of hope from her Holocaust-surviving parents, all burdens of survivors’ guilt, all fears, and many sorrows. That there is such a thing as generational PTSD. But then she oh so quickly goes on to characterize her sister’s actions and outbursts as switches being flipped, that she could control her behavior quickly depending on the person, place, time.
She characterizes her mother as unloving, unresponsive—All energy and consideration were given to her sister. Her father? Whoo boy: What an unyielding and controlling person, interested solely in coming out the Sane One in the Family (And Fremont should know as that’s exACTly what she herself does). Nope, my mom’s right, there’s little love to be had in this family.
And there’s little humor, little insight, to be had in this memoir as well. It’s as though Fremont was trying to make this a bit of Creative Nonfiction what with all her pronouncements of the glories of the great outdoors as juxtaposed against the sordidness of family life (And don’t EVEN get me started on how, after going to Law School, she whines and moans that it’s something that makes her miserable, that she’d really like to be rowing or hiking… Uhm, join the club, Ms. Fremont. Who doesn’t wanna be doing something else?! No, as I unload the dishwashers at night or listen to multitudes of teenagers gripe at me in the morning, I’m actually thinking of how fulfilled my job makes me…).
Gabra Zackman’s narration isn’t at fault; she does a sturdy job with her performance. Maybe a little nondescript what with neither adding nor detracting from the narrative, but she doesn’t shy away from all the family’s traumas. Or Fremont’s dramas.
Nope, by the end I was sore worn-out. And I could not for the life of me see how, given all the many and varied insults she suffered at the hands of her family, she would even want ANY part of her father’s inheritance which her sister offered to share with her, however belatedly. I would just wanna stay the heck away from all of that.
But that’s where my sister’s observation comes in: Fremont is all about the money. A scathing condemnatory tell-all memoir? Sure, the money’s good. And sharing the inheritance of a father who disowned her?
Sure, the money’s good…
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