Review by New York Times Review
A parent's power is not unlike that of a ruler of a small empire, capable of dramatically shaping the fate of its inhabitants. This reality can also breed tragedy, as it does in the French psychotherapist Maude Julien's "The Only Girl in the World" (written with her collaborator, Ursula Gauthier, and translated by Adriana Hunter). This memoir - at once fascinating, mystifying and distressing - tells the story of a father, Louis Didier, who rules his family with the brutality of a despot. Among an alarmingly long list of disturbing childhood duties, Julien must regularly bathe in her father's dirty bath water to soak up, he says, his beneficial energies, and spend nights sitting still in a dark, rat-infested cellar - "to meditate on death" - with bells sewn into her sweater to sound an alarm if she moves. Many of these tasks are in preparation for the impending disaster her father is convinced will someday occur - when Julien will need to go undercover or escape. Didier, as he tells it, was raised in a poor family with a father who beat him. But he went on to join the resistance in Lille, France, during World War II and, later, owned the largest Peugeot car dealership in the city. Somewhere along the way, he also became a high-ranking member of the enigmatic fraternity of Freemasons. Whatever the psychological consequences of this life and the oaths of a Mason might be, Didier emerged with a demented ideology all his own. He was committed to, Julien recounts, "sculpting me into the superior being I'm destined to become." This was the plan decades before she was born. Didier chose his wife under similarly dictatorial circumstances: In 1936, he persuaded a local miner to allow him to take in his youngest daughter, Jeannine. Didier promised to offer her the finest education and life - in exchange for her parents never seeing her again. He made good on the promise and then, in 1957, announced that Jeannine would bear his child. Didier eventually moved his "three-person family cult" to an isolated house near Cassel. Here, Julien is home-schooled by her mother. Jeannine, who regards her daughter more as fellow inmate than helpless child, also shows no mercy. In the most chilling scene, Jeannine walks in on the family's handyman abusing her daughter sexually (as he has been doing since she was 6). Julien believes this will bring the torture to an end. "Here she is_ She sees me, our eyes meet, and ... she looks away." It seems every adult who enters this realm loses all sense of humanity. And yet Julien manages to wrest souvenirs of happiness from her childhood: Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2; Arthur, her beloved piebald pony; and "The Idiot," by Dostoyevsky. As part of her training, Julien is required to learn a number of musical instruments - "the only people who make it out of concentration camps alive are musicians," her father counsels; to look after the animals; and to read great literature. Still, she is left with the vexing questions: "Why am I not allowed out? ... Why does no one kiss and hug me like people do in books? ... Why does my mother hate me so much?" The reader, too, is left asking these questions. The narrative is largely written from within Julien's claustrophobic existence. There is little room for her later self - the adult who becomes a psychotherapist with an expertise in psychological control - to interlace observations about her parents' barbaric character or to explore the bewildering spirals of manipulation. This may be a stylistic choice - it holds the reader inside the trauma - but it also keeps the story within the narrowest of confines when, at times, I wished it would expand. Without giving away the ending, when this world begins to crack - letting in enough light for Julien to squint and see beyond - the story takes on the energy of a thriller, building on the reader's hectic desire for her escape. Didier made it his senseless mission to build his daughter into a superhuman, but to her credit, she shatters this fantasy to pieces by remaining human. ? Nell Casey is the editor of "The Journals of Spalding Gray" and an editor at large at Catapult.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 24, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
In 1936, Louis Didier adopted a daughter. At 18, after receiving an education, she returned to marry him and fulfill her purpose: to bear his child, who was to become a superior being, capable of thwarting all evil and raising up humanity. Julien's debut memoir, with coauthor Gauthier, recounts her isolated childhood in rural France, where she was kept prisoner and indoctrinated by her father, a Freemason whose paranoia had overtaken his life. To prepare her for the challenges ahead, Julien's parents subjected her to years of physical and psychological torture: she was forced to grip electric fences and to sit for hours without moving in a rat-infested cellar, all to ensure that she would be strong enough to best any enemies. Julien's frank descriptions of each atrocity underline the stark reality that she lived in a reality where emotions were forbidden and no one was to be trusted. It is Julien's relationships with animals that keep her alive, teaching her love and empathy and bringing a compelling warmth and hope into an often-devastating memoir.--Winterroth, Amanda Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Julien writes of growing up in a family of survivalists in a town outside of Dunkirk, France, in this harrowing memoir. Born in 1957, Julien, now a psychotherapist living in Paris, was locked away from the world for over a decade starting at age three. During this time, Julien's days were meticulously scheduled. Her mother became her sole teacher; she lived in a dark cellar to "meditate on death"; her father made her hold onto electric fences in order to strengthen her willpower. She rarely came into physical contact with anyone besides her parents, and the only sense of love and companionship she felt was for her two pets-her dog, Linda, and her horse, Arthur. Her father claimed superpowers, even the ability to read minds. As she grew older, Julien alternated between fear and resistance, realizing that her father might just be a "friendless, loveless man, who never gives or receives any kindness." It was only at age 16 that she was able to leave the family compound in order to take her state school exams. The following year, she was allowed to take a train to Dunkirk to study music, and it was only then that she realized she could break away from her parents. This is a dark, moving, and thoughtfully rendered story. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A disturbing, engrossing memoir of a bizarre, highly abusive childhood.Psychotherapist Julien makes her literary debut with a gripping chronicle of growing up imprisoned and tormented by her parents. Isolated on a walled estate not far from Dunkirk, Julien was raised to become a "superior being," destined to "control the weak-minded and bring about the great regeneration of the universe." Her father, a paranoid, narcissistic conspiracy theorist, "a Grand Master of Freemasonry and a great knight of a secret order," had adopted and then married Julien's mother, who assisted in the demanding, cruel regimen that he designed to shape their daughter's body and mind. They locked her in a dank, rat-infested cellar, forbidding her to move (her mother sewed bells in her sweater to monitor disobedience). They also attempted to quash any signs of love or compassion; Julien had to cage her gentle dog every day, and when her beloved horse died, they made her dig a hole to bury it. Her father bought the horse not as a pet for Julien but to make sure she learned to ride: "just like swimming, riding will be very useful if I need to escape" persecution and also "to be able to get a job with a circus in case I have to hide or go undercover at some point." They forced her to bathe in their own dirty bathwater: "an honor," her father said, that "allows you to benefit from my energies when they enter your body." They refused to summon a doctor when she was ill, and they ignored her being sexually abused by their lecherous handyman. Finally, when Julien was an adolescent, a kind, observant music teacher assessed the situation and contrived to give her lessons at his own studio; he soon hired her to work for him part-time and introduced her to a young man who married her. Although she escaped physically, Julien admits, "being outside wasn't enough to make me free." Years of therapy led her to become a therapist herself. A startling testament of survival. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
