Tales From The Family Crypt is FREE Thursday, May 28, 2015 and Friday May 29, 2015! I could wax poetic about the many reasons you should download the book and tell everyone you know to do the same but instead, I’ll just share excerpts of a few of my recent 5-star Amazon reviews. You can decide for yourself if this book calls you. (It will! And, it’s a quick read too! Perfect for summer reading, fast and entertaining and possibly helpful.) And, remember if you do read the book, reviewing it on Amazon and Goodreads is good Karma! Please share this post and pass along the heads up about my free giveaway. Thanks!
Click here to the link to download Tales From The Family Crypt.
Unbelievable! Yes, I have a crazy sister! Thank you, Deborah, for telling the truth about dysfunctional families with grace and humor. What a great story, what a great story teller. I am recommending this book to everyone I know.
The author’s story resonated with me in a huge way. I’d give the book ten stars if I could.
I have always ascribed to a quirky theory that nuttiness skips a generation. By and large, both sets of my grandparents were pretty normal for the era in which they lived; whenever I tell stories about my parents, however, I always feel inclined to add, “Seriously, I am not making these people up.” Over the years, so many friends from elementary and high school have expressed envy about our picture-perfect existence and my supposedly idyllic life as the only child in a wealthy family. What no one ever saw, however, were the deep layers of emotional abuse that – if I had ever shared with a teacher or a counselor – would have been dismissed as the product of an overactive imagination.
I was, thus, able to relate on so many dimensions to Deborah Carroll’s nonfiction narrative memoir, “Tales From the Family Crypt,” in which she illustrates – often with bittersweet humor – how the interactions she and her husband had with their respective families shaped how they would eventually raise their own children. The opening chapters about family photographs are especially well drawn; when everyone is dressed up for photo ops and on their very best behavior, how are viewers ever expected to discern the pain that lays beneath? Sadly, we all want to love our families because we’re supposed to, that to not love them or to see what flawed and hateful individuals so many of them are will somehow label us as “bad” or ungrateful individuals. Yes, they put a roof over our heads and gave us daily sustenance but what about nurturing our souls?
Carroll could certainly have taken the easy route of turning this into a work of fiction with combative characters. The fact that all of it is real, however, delivers a much more potent message. Specifically, you can’t choose your relatives, nor can you rent any of them out for parts. You can either be crushed as a victim to their own insecurities or you can shrug and say, “Yes, well I’m my own person and I will always care what happens to you but I really can’t be around you when you’re being so annoyingly toxic.”
A highly recommended read and kudos to the author for the courage of sharing her own story in such a constructive – and entertaining – way.
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