Book Review: Girl A

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This is my book review of Abigail Dean’s debut memoir, Girl A.

She (Girl A) thought she had escaped her past. But there are some things you can’t outrun.

Lex Gracie doesn’t want to think about her family, or about growing up in her parents’ House of Horrors. She doesn’t want to think about her identity as what they all call “Girl A.” She’s the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings.

She could avoid her parents because her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created. Her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But then her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home.

It is then that she realizes she can’t run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the house into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings — and with the childhood they shared.

This tale of survival is a gripping psychological family story about shifting alliances and sibling betrayals. It is about the secrets siblings keep, from themselves and from each other.

Who has each of these siblings become? As Lex asks each sibling to agree to her family’s final act, she discovers how potent the spell of their shared family mythology is. Who among them remains in its thrall and who has truly broken free?

This is a story about a young girl who escapes her terrifying life of captivity. For readers of books like Sharp Objects, this book reaches out and shakes you into understanding what these children truly went through.

Book Summary:

The place card name “A” was given to Lex, who escaped from her abusive family home as a teenager. They lived in squalor, with a father who had grown increasingly psychotic with his religious views.

Her mother had babies, one right after the other, because that seemed to be what Father wanted.

There came a time when he wouldn’t allow the children to attend school. And a gradual gradation to how far things went. They were chained in dirty rooms and not allowed to leave them. They were basically starved, while Father ate quite well.

And then Lex escaped one day and ran in front of the first car she saw driving down the road. She had the despairing look of someone who had been betrayed by the very people who should have loved and cared for her.

The children were all adopted by different couples. Lex, being the oldest, ended up with an older family. She had a good life and people who loved her. She got therapy and became an attorney.

The bringing together of some of the siblings comes about when their mother dies in prison and leaves them the ramshackle house they once lived in.

My Thoughts:

I read this book in a couple of days. Like someone caught staring at a car pile-up on the interstate, it was hard to look away from the contents of this book. Although, of course, it was fiction.

To think of someone willfully starving and chaining his children due to whatever demonic cult-like beliefs he held is reprehensible, of course.

I imagine it was hard to write this sort of book. To sit in the character’s head to write her story. Even a work of fiction can be profoundly troubling.

About The Author:

This is Abigail Dean’s first novel, a debut that has catapulted her to fame.

She is an attorney in her early thirties who has surprised even herself with the notoriety this book has given her.