This memoir describes life in the late 1960s and early 1970s in
an alternative community in New England dominated by Micah Perks’
raging unreasonable father. The group of adults and children was
a school for problem children — kids with emotional problems
and sometimes criminal tendencies. Her parents have a stormy marriage,
and it is not helped when they decide to make it open. Both of
them practice their infidelities without pretense. The atmosphere
of the group is anarchic and often tense. There’s sexual exploration
among the children and sexual abuse of the children by some of
the adults, although Perks herself does not report being abused.
Indeed, she does not seem especially traumatized by her experience.
Her relationship with her father continues to be difficult in
her adult life.

Perks was a young child, but she was observant and she remembers
many details. Indeed, the detail is amazing given that she turned
five years old in 1968, and so for much of the book the is writing
about times when she was between four and nine years old. She
tells stories of her father, and relates stories told by her father
of his childhood in England. She explains events in detail, although
I found it quite hard to get clear about the minor characters
— they are many of them, and they are not drawn in fully enough
to get a strong sense of who they are.

Maybe the chapter I enjoyed the most is the last one, which is
about her life as an adult, and the different versions of the
past she gets from her mother and father, who have long since
split up. Most people think that he started a fire in the main
house in order to collect insurance and solve financial problems,
but he denies it. He has become a Buddhist and also worked as
a butler for rich families. She is married with two children,
seeming to have a far more conventional life than her parents.
Her sister, on the other hand, has married someone born a woman
who identifies as male. Perks tries to make sense of the past,
but really it still seems to be an enigma for her, and she doesn’t
seem to understand her family. The story is almost dreamlike and
it’s hard for the reader to get a sense of continuity. It’s not
really clear why she wrote the memoir in the first place — the
story isn’t strong enough to attract many readers. It seems that
the book serves more of a therapeutic function for her, trying
to make sense of her childhood. It might make a better narrative
when she has acheived a stronger sense of what happened, what
the truth is, and what it all means to her.

© 2001 Christian Perring

Categories: Memoirs