An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir
Written by Ariel Leve
Narrated by Martha Plimpton
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
A beautiful, startling, and candid memoir about growing up without boundaries, in which Ariel Leve recalls with candor and sensitivity the turbulent time she endured as the only child of an unstable poet for a mother and a beloved but largely absent father, and explores the consequences of a psychologically harrowing childhood as she seeks refuge from the past and recovers what was lost.
Ariel Leve grew up in Manhattan with an eccentric mother she describes as “a poet, an artist, a self-appointed troublemaker and attention seeker.” Leve learned to become her own parent, taking care of herself and her mother’s needs. There would be uncontrolled, impulsive rages followed with denial, disavowed responsibility, and then extreme outpourings of affection. How does a child learn to feel safe in this topsy-turvy world of conditional love?
Leve captures the chaos and lasting impact of a child’s life under siege and explores how the coping mechanisms she developed to survive later incapacitated her as an adult. There were material comforts, but no emotional safety, except for summer visits to her father’s home in South East Asia—an escape that was terminated after he attempted to gain custody. Following the death of a loving caretaker, a succession of replacements raised Leve—relationships which resulted in intense attachment and loss. It was not until decades later, when Leve moved to other side of the world, that she could begin to emancipate herself from the past. In a relationship with a man who has children, caring for them yields clarity of what was missing.
In telling her haunting story, Leve seeks to understand the effects of chronic psychological maltreatment on a child’s developing brain, and to discover how to build a life for herself that she never dreamed possible: An unabbreviated life.
Ariel Leve
Ariel Leve is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Guardian, Financial Times Magazine, the Telegraph, the Observer, and the London Sunday Times Magazine, where she was a senior writer and a columnist. At the British Press Awards she was short-listed twice for Interviewer of the Year and Highly Commended twice. Her books include It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me.
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Reviews for An Abbreviated Life
80 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Not only is this a powerful and fascinating story of a terrible childhood and how it affected Leve's development as a human being, it is a beautifully written and compulsively readable book. I read it all in one go, all 288 pages, because I couldn't put it down. This is not something I generally do with books.A painful, disturbing read but highty recommended!
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5So disconnected. Great reader but I couldn’t keep up. After 5 chapters, I quit
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Even as an adult, she is running from her childhood.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hooked right away, that's my life without all the CELEBRITIES. Thank you
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pretty funny yet hauntingly tragic.
Well read also- narrator does justice.
Ta