Light in Bandaged Places

Kinchen offers a memoir of healing and finding oneself in the wake of sexual exploitation. The author writes that she was in the eighth grade in the 1960swhen she met middle-school teacher Mark Johnson for the first time. (The author notes that she changed some names in this memoir.) She notes that her deeply religious Lutheran family's refusal to discuss things openly regarding faith or other matters caused her to gravitate toward the teacher's "kind and safe" smile and "easy-going and calm manner." Mr. Johnson--or Mark, as he soon urges Liz to call him--drew few boundaries between himself and his teenage students, she says; he took them out for drinks at a coffeehouse (beer for him, soda and iced tea for his students) and whiled away summers lounging with them on the beach, unquestioned. The author, who was 16, considered Mark, who was 32, to be her friend, and the author's story is one of personal reckoning and development after her grooming and sexual abuse by someone she trusted. As her life progressed, Kinchen grappled with her religion and her family and romantic relationships as she struggled with memories of her abuse. Overall, Kinchen's memoir is thoughtful and deeply felt. However, its prose outlines complex and troubling situations at a remove that feels more like journalism than personal narrative. The style is essayistic rather than dynamic, and thus gives readers little sense of the emotional difficulties the author endured, instead offering readers summaries of life events. Kinchen does come across as a sympathetic and admirable figure, and many readers are likely to find inspiration in her story. However, one is often forced to piece together the emotional depth of her experience from stark details. A meditation on a traumatic past that's hampered by a distant presentation.

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