Review: Coming Clean

I recently finished this book - it only took me like 10 days. I'm not sure what's going on because I can spend months on end laboring through a fiction title and it literally seems like work to have to read one. But then I get totally mesmerized by a nonfiction book such as this one and fly right through it. Yeah, I don't totally get it either.

The author grew up the child of hoarders, before cable TV taught the world that hoarding was an an actual psychological disorder. The gritty details are almost unbelievable (that is if you've never seen A&E's "Hoarders") - rats, sludge, strangers in the attic, visits from child protective services, and much more. I found it interesting how it affected even the most basic functions of her life. Not only did she have to live in a filthy dumphole, but also she couldn't bathe, eat, sleep, or use the bathroom in a normal way. By the time she reached high school, she had to go to some lengths to hide the horrific conditions she lived in from her friends.

She was driven to succeed in school and in life because she wanted something different for herself. However, she spends a good portion of the book talking about how her parents' living habits continued to affect her life even after she reached adulthood and had a career and a place of her own. I won't get into any details except to say that she has some awesome friends and the situation with her parents reminds me of the line from the Eagles song "Hotel California" - "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. . ."

It's worth a read, if you're interested in that sort of thing.