BLACK OUT GIRL
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008- (by gbauler)
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- Category: Reviews Young and Sober
“Blackout Girl” by Jennifer Storm
Reviewed by Ginger B.
Jennifer Storm’s account of her dark and disturbing journey through her teens is a horrifying narrative of her tortured youth, and her pin-ball life choices which landed her in situations which were more than disturbing to me as the reader. On page 3, she describes her first rape at the age of 12, and the next three quarters of the book is a chronicle of her cataclysmic demise, almost to the point of annihilation. I have read my share of stories of addiction and Ms. Storm’s tale is among the most unnerving I have read in a while. I don’t know if it was because she was so young when these events occurred or whether her raw, simple style of writing was such a direct contrast to the heinous worlds she inhabited.
As a teen-ager, Ms. Storm’s life was nothing less than total tragedy. Her formative years were ravaged by such demons as rape, promiscuity, anorexia, drug and alcohol addiction, and self mutilation. Add to that her dysfunctional family dynamics, her decision to undergo abortion, and her battle with finding her sexual identity and the heaviness of her existence overwhelms the reader, making it even hard to keep reading some times.
Her description of her attempted suicide is almost anticlimactic, as she writes, “I took all the medicine I had there…more than twenty pills. …As the tears splashed down onto my leg I pressed the razor against my flesh and sliced into my wrist. … I opened the bottle of vodka…and drank and cut and drank and cut. This went on for hours.” She was eventually rescued by her brother and brought to treatment and the last quarter of the book details her emergence out of the hell her life had become.
I recommend Ms. Storm’s book for any young person who wants to see what the life of an addict is really about - no holds barred. There is no sugar coating here, and because the writing is uncomplicated, it may appeal to a younger audience. This is a book written with courage and hope from the heart of a young woman who has been through hell and whose life is an affirmation of the gifts of recovery.
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