Memory Slips: A Memoir of Music and Healing

Rating:
Summary: Memoir of one life-one lived in music, one lived in healing
Review: A memoir differs from an autiobiography because the author is not insisting on the truth of every unimportant detail. The author uses either fiction or nonfiction as is best to illustrate a greater truth. Whether every paragraph of a memoir has actually occured outside the author's imaginations does not detract from the legitimacy of the broader issues the author brings into focus. I do not doubt any of the important claims Cutting makes, and I don't think her motive is to deceive us with any falsehoods into taking her side. In the end, even she is able to show compassion and strive for understanding. This should be the emphasis left in the reader's mind, not whether she made any of it up.

Rating:
Summary: Stellar
Review: An absolutely stunningly clear account of losing memory- and many of the complexities within this experience- and of reclaiming resilience, balance, and self. As Cutting loses her memory of the music she is performing (music she has memorized and played over and over) in the process of working through her child abuse history, her story is a highly interesting account of the complexities of "memory slips" in an adult. Cutting navigates her history of child abuse with incredible strength and determination, and ultimately with great compassion for her family. Beautifully read by Cutting- some of her piano playing is on this audio cassette which is one reason I would recommend the audio version. Her musical expression is an important part of her story. The audio may be helpful for both women and men who have experienced sexual abuse as children/ adolescents as well as for those who want to understand the impact of this kind of an abuse history. In addition, this audio may be highly valuable in exploring the specific psychological dynamics that can arise with those who are or have been musical performers. The depth of this audio is difficult to articulate- the exploration of family psychological dynamics is worth every penny.

Rating:
Summary: The truth sets us free
Review: I have read many personal accounts of incest (and other forms of sexual abuse). I am also a survivor of incest (and other sexual abuse as well), and I am a dancer. This book very accurately depicts the effects of child abuse on art, memory, and expression. Linda Cutting achieves this through an honest memoir of her own experience of memory recovery in adulthood, and it's effect on her life and art. Often her words spoke my own experience, particularly in her descriptions of having a flashback. Severe child abuse alters the structure of our minds, but through truth we can transcend. This book is superbly written. With very little description of the actual incest I was transported into her world. I could see her as a child, and the life she lived in. My heart reached out to her. If I ever want someone to understand what life is like for an adult survivor of incest this will be top on my list of recommendations. After reading this book I felt as if I had sat down with Linda, and she had told me her story. I thank her for having the courage to share her story with us. Her book is a great help to other survivors and for anyone who seeks to understand the life of an artist who is also a survivor of child abuse. This book helped me to get in touch with my own strength and empowerment to stand tall despite my past, and to continue my artistic work.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful restraint
Review: I've read this book with a mixture of tears and relief. In reading it, I've relived a life of torment and pain, which I could only escape through music. I am now a professional oboist (freelance) and, while I love music, I only have this career because I practiced to escape mental, physical and sexual abuse. To read Ms. Cutting's words and memories was to learn that others have shared my pain and my experiences. Thank you, Linda, for writing so much of what I have felt and could never say.

Rating:
Summary: Similar life
Review: I've read this book with a mixture of tears and relief. In reading it, I've relived a life of torment and pain, which I could only escape through music. I am now a professional oboist (freelance) and, while I love music, I only have this career because I practiced to escape mental, physical and sexual abuse. To read Ms. Cutting's words and memories was to learn that others have shared my pain and my experiences. Thank you, Linda, for writing so much of what I have felt and could never say.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly poignant
Review: In "Memory Slips", concert pianist Linda Katherine Cutting chronicles her gradual breakdown and healing as she comes to terms with the horrendous abuse, physical, emotional and sexual, that she suffered at the hands of her parents as a child. Included in this memoir is the erosion of her career due to memory loss; her hospitalization and treatment, the disintegration of her first marriage, and her slow, painful, climb back to life.

This book testifies to both the worst and best of the human spirit: agonizing, as one relives the abuse Ms. Cutting suffered, and heroic, as she fights to reclaim her life and music. The abuse she suffered becomes all the more real under the dignified, poised and restrained words she uses. A deeply wrenching and uplifting book.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly poignant
Review: In "Memory Slips", concert pianist Linda Katherine Cutting chronicles her gradual breakdown and healing as she comes to terms with the horrendous abuse, physical, emotional and sexual, that she suffered at the hands of her parents as a child. Included in this memoir is the erosion of her career due to memory loss; her hospitalization and treatment, the disintegration of her first marriage, and her slow, painful, climb back to life.

This book testifies to both the worst and best of the human spirit: agonizing, as one relives the abuse Ms. Cutting suffered, and heroic, as she fights to reclaim her life and music. The abuse she suffered becomes all the more real under the dignified, poised and restrained words she uses. A deeply wrenching and uplifting book.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful restraint
Review: In an era when shock value is the order of the day, it is exhilarating and refreshing to read such an artful, restrained, dignified, humane, even gentle work on a subject of such importance. MEMORY SLIPS is an elegant, powerful, memorable book, and Linda Cutting is a writer of rare gifts.

Rating:
Summary: the most honest portrayal I have ever read
Review: the 1st review asks, Is this true? I'd like to ask why the reviewer chooses to ask that question. A truly human account of what it's like to have this happen to you. Not a courtroom drama nor an attempt to prove anything to anyone -- that is totally beside the point. I routinely recommend this book to everyone I know. The author's truth is unquestionable.

Rating:
Summary: impressive
Review: This memoir of an extraordinarily gifted pianist who found the courage to get help for the years in which she was sexually abused by her clergyman father stands out among similiar memoirs. That she not only found the courage to heal but to report her father to the church is a remarkable testimony to what good therapy, support, one's dedication to their craft, and personal determination to heal can do. The author's brothers were likewise abused, and wound up dealing with depression and mental illness. That the author's piano lessons first served as a bargain between her and her father, as a bribe for not telling about the abuse, makes her journey both as a professional musician, a writer, and a human being especially poignant.