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With or Without You

A Memoir

by Domenica Ruta

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There are currently 37 member reviews
for With or Without You

Suzanne G. (Tucson, AZ)

With or Without You
This memoir left me with an uneasy feeling. It is hard to believe that anyone so strung out, so damaged, so low a self-esteem could write such a tantalizing story, yet alone remember anything about her past 30 years. How in heaven's name was she able to advance herself to the educational level she did, with so much absence that comes with both her real life, and her mind-altering life? I will have to say I liked her style of writing, her words and her strength.

Bea C. (Liberty Lake, WA)

White Trash Opera
Sometimes it's hard to read about the life of a woman who was raised by an unfit mother. This book has chapter after chapter of the author relating repulsive things her mother said and did, like leaving her 10 year old daughter with a known pedophile, wanting her teenaged daughter to get pregnant and starting her daughter out on alcohol and snorting Oxycontin. Her mother is the kind of person I don't want to be around, and spending a whole book reading about her was almost more than I could take. Maybe the author wanted us to understand why she is "through" with her mother. Don't worry. I forgive the author. Even with a lot of rambling, aimless jumping about throughout her past and present life, the last few chapters of the book about her recovery make the book worth reading. The book can best be summed up with a quote from the author,"It starts out as a girlish whisper, grows louder with each passing year, until that faint promise we traced in the sand becomes a declarative, then an imperative: I WILL NOT BECOME BY MOTHER."

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