Family Secrets: The Dionne Quintuplets' Autobiography

Rating:
Summary: Hogwash
Review: Here are five girls raised as royalty for most of their lives. Every want was met, they had the latest clothes, latest toys, etc. They were catered to and waited on.

Now, they go to live with their family who are poor farmers. They are expected to be just as the other children. They suddenly have chores. They suddenly aren't looked on as princesses but equals. They don't have a pristine environment.

Poor, poor princesses....Now they are just ordinary. It had to be a shock.

But, to take it out on their parents who fought desparately to regain their custody. They didn't even know anything about the world outside their hospital home. Their parents showed them the real world.

Now, they accuse their father of abusing them, their mother of cruelty. Okay, so they did it after the parents died so that they couldn't defend themselves. Isn't that interesting?

Poor, poor princesses. They're expected to be ordinary, so they resent it and lash out. False memory syndrome, I'll bet.

When does one take responsibility for their own lives despite what happened in the past?

Rating:
Summary: Please delete my previous review!
Review: How strong these women are for overcoming the demons of thier past. I admire thier courage to let the world know what life was really like behind those cold gates.

Rating:
Summary: How a Father Won a Battle But Lost the War
Review: I read this book during the past year. I found it to be much more revealing than their 1960s account of their lives, written with James Brough. In "We Were Five", the four remaining Quintuplets used the real names of their siblings, but neglected to come foreward with the charges of sexual abuse leveled at their father in this newer account.
The church officials who could have helped them turned their backs on them, telling them to "submit", and deciding that as long as their father gave monetary support to the Church, he was being a good Catholic. At a time when there was little if any separation of Church and State where the French Canadian government was concerned, there were many other children who experienced the same indignities. It is good that the Dionnes have spoken out on their behalf.
I'm glad that shortly after this account was published, that Yvonne, Annette, and Cecile were finally given $2.8 million dollars in compensation by the Ontario Government. But if there is any real justice, Ontario should be paying them annuity. After all, they didn't ask to become the saviors of Ontario during the Depression, and they only ended up as such by accident of being born Quintuplets and subsequent government manipulation.The Ontario Government made $500 million off of "Quintland" during the thirties. Caged and exploited for the first years of their lives, and tended to by Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, they were eventually reunited with their parents and siblings after lengthy and strenuous custody battles. But while Oliva Dionne may have won the physical custody of his daughters, the loyalties of the three surviving sisters ultimately lie firmly with the Doctor who treated them with more dignity than their parents.
While it is well that these sisters, whose lives I have followed since I was a kid myself, have been compensated, I hope their siblings can make peace with them, although they shouldn't be entitled to their sisters' reward money after the way they treated them. Due to the times in which they were born, they aroused more public interest than they might have in a time of more affluence, and were led on a nightmarish odyssey that included experimentation, exploitation, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, failed marriages, and the early deaths of the two youngest Quintuplets, Emilie, and Marie in 1954 and 1970 respectively.
Their parents will have to answer for their sins in another lifetime, since they are both deceased. But when the three surviving Quintuplets sent a word of warning to the parents of the McCaughey Septuplets about not letting their children suffer the indignities that they did, my respect for them was renewed.
I wish these three remarkable ladies all the best in their remaining years. Their story, so far, as had as fair an outcome as could have been expected. As their mother once said to an American auidience years ago during a vaudeville act, "Dieu Beniesse".--God bless you, Yvonne, Annette, and Cecile.

Rating:
Summary: childhood lost
Review: I think a lot of this book is more than just about the Dionne quints and their lives. How many other poor defenseless young children are brought into this world only to be treated as though they had no right to have been born. The poor souls. They were made to feel guily for having survivied and dividing their family through no fault of their own. I found the most inspiring part of this book to be the introduction by Cecile Dionne who says that after many hard years she has learned that being born and survivng was not her fault and that she should no longer bear any guilt for it. That is a lesson a lot of other people need to learn as well unfortunately. How sad that anyone especially her family members would make her feel that way. A human life is a miracle and a blessing. And the Dionne quints were 5 little blessings. How sad that the joy and innocence and trust of young children is always stripped away,and in the case of the Dionne sisters, in a particularly cruel and unfair way.

Rating:
Summary: Deepest Regrets
Review: It was only on the 68th anniversary of the Dionne Quints' births that I learned of the passing of the alleged oldest Quint, Yvonne, a cancer victim, on June 23, 2001. While a bit baffled over how such an event could have escaped my notice for nearly a year, I still stand by most of what I said in my previous review, although I realize that monetary compensation may not mean as much to the sisters now.
In earlier times, the death of one of these sisters might have been front page news. But perhaps the fact that Yvonne's passing was apparently an obscure news item, at least in the town where I live, is a sign that the sisters have finally acheived the level of privacy that they have so long desired.

Rating:
Summary: The biggest crock of hooey since John Kerry
Review: This book isn't even slightly believable. Firstly, the author must have had to pay someone so much to publish it that he couldn't even find a good editor.
As for the content, it is full of falsehoods--including the names of the Dionne children other than the fabulous five. Perhaps siblings were made up for them in the book. But, there are two who were real people and whose names are false. There is no explaination for this anywhere in the book that I could find-- usually if names are changed for whatever reason, an explaination of such is given at the beginning.

I guess "Lucie" as she is called here is supposed to be Pauline Dionne. I've read things SHE has stated and I really doubt she ever referred to her parents in derogatory terms.

Throughout the book, the quints through their author put their parents down and say they were rotten parents. Yet, what they neglected to mention is that Marie actually gave up her two daughters to foster care because she didn't want to deal with them! They were not infants, but older children who had to deal with the emotional trauma this did to them.

So, their parents who had to fight the government for half of their children for 9 years were bad to do so. Yet, it's okay for Marie to throw her children away to strangers?

I also really hate it when authors write about someone who is dead and put thoughts in their heads. How does anyone know what Elzire or Oliva thought during certain times? It's essentially fabricated.

The parents are judged as being wrong for being mistrusting of others. Hello? If my kids were legally kidnapped by the people I had trusted with my life and the life of my entire family, and I had to fight the world for nearly a decade to retrieve them, I'd be pretty mistrusting also!

The real kicker is the very end where the author said the surviving quints told this story without bitterness. Yet, the entire book is steaming with bitterness.

Although I bought this book used for 99 cents, it was a total waste of my money.

The worst bit about the entire deal is that I am unfortunately distantly related to the quints.
Don't waste your time or money on this piece of crap.