Daddy's Girl

Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for a ground-breaking work!
Review: Although this book was written two decades ago, it is still a ground-breaking memoir. In fact, it was the first book on sexual abuse I had ever read. As a victim myself, Vale Allen's voice helped me realize my feelings were normal, I wasn't to blame and that I could make something of myself.
Vale Allen uses her skills as a novelist to reveal her life-altering experience in surprisingly entertaining way.
Unfortunately all these years later, there are too many new victims. I hope Daddy's Girl will help them as it helped me.

Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for a ground-breaking work!
Review: Although this book was written two decades ago, it is still a ground-breaking memoir. In fact, it was the first book on sexual abuse I had ever read. As a victim myself, Vale Allen's voice helped me realize my feelings were normal, I wasn't to blame and that I could make something of myself.
Vale Allen uses her skills as a novelist to reveal her life-altering experience in surprisingly entertaining way.
Unfortunately all these years later, there are too many new victims. I hope Daddy's Girl will help them as it helped me.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: Charlotte Vale Allen came to our school to discuss the issue of incest. She was a phenomenal guest speaker. Her book is also excellent. She tells of her troubling encounter with incest. Hopefully her book will give individuals who experience incest the power to speak out against it!!! Thanks Chalotte!!!

Rating:
Summary: An autobiography
Review: DADDY'S GIRL is Charlotte Vale Allen's story - it is her autobiography. What makes this book important, is that it is NOT just any story. It is a story of incest and of one person's brave ordeal in telling it to the public.

Ms Allen grew up in a family that seemed to thrive on lies. And the biggest lies that surrounded the family were the problems they had with Daddy. He was abusive to all of them: he constantly yelled at her mother; he tried often to physically hurt her. Her brothers were treated a little better, but they too were filled with anger and fear for their father. Charlotte, however, developed a "special" bond, that continued for many years. Because of this abuse, Charlotte grew up with a number of neuroses and fears that followed her into adulthood.

The book takes place in the present, with flashbacks starting from her earliest memories. What I liked about the way the story was written, was that it helped us see how her past affected her present life. She took the time to compare herself and her daughter, and the relationship they had, to what she had with her own mother, many years ago. Her relationship with her father destroyed her ability to trust any man, and she shows the reader how she slowly over came this.

I found DADDY'S GIRL, despite its theme, an easy book to read. Ms Allen's style of writing enables the reader to see HER world through the eyes of herself as a child. I think this is important because it helps convey what she truly went through. What's most important is that she was able to tell the story from her point of view. If it had been written from a third person narrative, the book would have been a more impersonal telling, and would not have come across as poignant as it did. I highly recommend DADDY'S GIRL.

Rating:
Summary: Knew better!!
Review: I found it hard to believe that Charlotte Vale Allen let this sexual abuse by her father continue until she was 18 years old. By that time, she certainly knew it was wrong. For that reason, I did not like this book.

Rating:
Summary: Knew better!!
Review: I found it hard to believe that Charlotte Vale Allen let this sexual abuse by her father continue until she was 18 years old. By that time, she certainly knew it was wrong. For that reason, I did not like this book.

Rating:
Summary: Seeing through her eyes
Review: I got this because I wanted to understand the people I know who went throught this. This is the real story of a woman who went through hell. She describes what her father put her through and how it affected her adult years. She shares the emotions she went through during the abuse. ...how dirty she felt. ...and how this affected relationships as an adult. This is something everyone should read. This isn't simply a psychology book discussing how abuse affects people. This is one person's detailed example of what the abuse does to someone.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: Of all the books written on the subject of child abuse, this book (one of the very first published) stands alone as a singular accomplishment. It is honest and insightful, yet never overly graphic. The author brings her considerable writing talent to bear on her reflection of how years of abuse shaped her as an adult and a parent. Never bitter, never placing blame, Charlotte Vale Allen offers a potent look at the insidious permanent effects of her childhood experience. It is a gracious, heartfelt autobiography in which the author not only never names her parents but, in many ways, offers an understanding of the family dynamics at play that is nothing less than remarkable. To read her fiction and then to read this book is to see a very full portrait of a woman with the heart of a lion and a powerful gift of insight into the behavior, not only of others but also of her own self--past and present. It is the definitive book to read in order to comprehend how an extraordinary child coped with an ongoing horror and yet emerged to take what she'd learned and turn it to the good by writing books that always offer viable explanations for what is, so often, inaccessible to most of us. In its own right, Daddy's Girl is a quiet masterpiece.