While I enjoyed the plot and story as it goes, I felt like this was perhaps too much of a slow burn for my liking.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!

I haven't read much non-fiction/memoirs, but of all the non-fiction/memoirs I read, this was the most difficult one to read and review. I just don't think its appropriate to rate someone's life, especially when its the story of a person who had to face abuse. So may rating an review is only based on the writing style. I cant say I enjoyed this book beacuse of obvious reasons but I am glad that I got the chance to read this book.

I feel bad for this actress/person and what she went through but I have no idea what the point of this book was. I was expecting some horrible horrible details and to get dragged into this cluster of her life and really it was just a book about how her dad was horrible to her and her mom one day asked her to get into bed with her while the mom was naked. Then how she stood on her own two feet and now is a comfortable lesbian woman who is an advocate for others in the LGQTB+ community. Her story was written well, just not sure why it had to be written. I think I lost something that was supposed to be poignant and I didn't get it. Received this book as an ARC and I am voluntarily giving my review. I am giving it 3 stars as she put her life out there even if I didn't care for the book.

The author, an award winning actor, activist, and writer, hides nothing and most importantly is honest with herself as she relates her real life story in raw, lyrical detail.

It’s a book telling of abusive parents, of being a professional actor since she was 8 years old, of brutal battles with anorexia, drugs, and alcohol before the age of 15.

It’s very difficult to read early on because you’re thinking, she’s 5, 8, then 11 years old, a child who is experiencing heinous acts, physical and sexual abuse, attacks on her psyche by the people in charge of her, parents, teachers. Her friends are in no better shape, skinny, gay kids like herself making it on the streets by any means or being shamelessly exploited by adults in the industry or who are in other roles of authority.

Then we follow her to Toronto at 14 years old, living on her own, still working as a professional actor, not even knowing simple adult things like cooking or even being able to afford a meal, doing laundry, or buying shoes because, again, she’s an exiled child with an already bitter and scarred disposition and no practical life experience. We wait for the bottom so that we can watch her make her way up. The author is alive to tell the story so we know there’s salvation in the end. No heroes come to her rescue. It’s the author’s own strength that not only
saves her but also gives her the insight to help others to climb out of the same type of “wreckage.”

If you can bear it, this is a hell of a read.

Wow, this book was a true testament to Joanne's strength and her survival skills. Joanne grew up in Canada as one of four children with a controlling mother and physically abusive father. In 2002 she sees her mother for the first time in 15 years due to the fact she's dying of cancer. This brings up so many of the horrific and devastating things that happened to her ands her siblings during their childhood.

Power, engaging, horrific, haunting read.

A brutal and emotional memoir that is a tough read content-wise but powerful, compelling, and inspiring.

Hard to read. The early abuse is heartwrenching. In the end the power of the individual and perseverance comes through. It's hard to believe how much people can overcome on there own. Inspiring. I recommend this book.

This book was very well written but damn was it heartbreaking. I struggled to get through parts of it because it was so heavy. It blows my mind that these are real
Things that happen in people’s homes. This memoir reads like that of Educated or the glass castle which are both tough but worth it. I was not familiar with joannes work as an actress but as a person I feel like I know her like an old friend now.

While this memoir is hard to read as Joanne Vannicola recounts her childhood in an abusive family setting, it is a story about a strong woman not letting her hardships break her down. Although she had every right to turn into a hardened, bitter person, she is instead is a shining light that proves that good can come out of bad. She has the power of forgiveness and strength when she could easily have given in.

It was a very heartbreaking and sort of hard read. Because i most of the time wanted to hug Joanne, make it so that they didn't have to go through this her and her siblings. It was devestating that it happend to them, because in the end it should'nt have.

Well written and heartbreaking. The author evokes many emotions with her words and the story flows well.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC copy of the book. The opinions expressed above are my own.

This was a great book. Thank you for sharing your story and I commend the author on the strength it took to share.

I really enjoyed this book, perfect for those who read biographies and Memoirs. This book was generously provided to me through NetGalley. Highly Recommended!

Really emotional book to read and to put down a few times it just got to me! Wonderful story line and you feel these characters in the book! He prepared to go through emotions! Never really read something like this before but so glad I did !

I was unable to complete this book as it was too upsetting and had details of abuse that I could t read. I don’t feel I should mark this book as bad because of my own issues with it.

When I decided to read All We Knew But Couldn’t Say by Joanne Vannicola, I knew from the blurb that this memoir would not be an easy read, and I was right. It is not easy to read parts of this tale, but I am so very glad that I did.

This is a memoir, an autobiography of Joanne Vannicola’s life from the age of five until the present day. As a young child, she and her sisters endured what I can only call horrific physical, emotional, and (at least for Joanne) sexual child abuse. What makes it even more horrifying, this abuse comes from her parents. Her father was a monster who used to physically beat the children for minor infractions. Her mother was mentally and emotionally unstable, and unfit to be in a parental role. Ms. Vannicola is brutally frank about what she went though as a young girl and how it affected her later as a teen and young adult.

This sounds like a depressing story, and obviously part of the story is hard to read, but it is also inspiring. This is a story of survival. This is the tale of a person who survives an extremely horrible childhood, and works through the trauma to become an Emmy award winning actress, an activist for women, for children of sexual abuse, and for the LGBTQ2+ community. Joanne Vannicola is an inspiration to me, and if you read her book, I think she will be one for you as well.

I must give a trigger warning here. This story discusses episodes of child abuse that occurred in the author’s life. If these stories could cause triggers for you, you might want to read another book.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley and Dundurn Press for an honest review.

The author doesn't hold back in this masterpiece and I felt all the emotion with this. The things the author goes through as a young girl is just so sick. I had a hard time reading this but it was worth it in the end.

I’m not familiar with Joanne Vannicola’s film or TV work but her memoir is a testament to her strength of character and sheer survival skills. Joanne grew up in Canada as one of four children of a controlling mother and abusive father. In 2002 she sees her mother for the first time in fifteen years because her mother is dying with stage four uterine cancer. With her visit to her mother in hospital, she begins the recollection of her childhood. The unfolding of what she and her siblings were put through is devastating and horrific.

Her mother, who seemed controlling and unprotective of her children initially, is revealed as an appalling human being. I got to the point where I couldn’t understand why any of the children would go and see her in hospital just because she was dying. Then I realised that it is perhaps easier to forgive someone when they’re dying because one can release oneself from that destructive attachment. I think it is extraordinary that Joanne was able to be there for her mother and converse with her as she lay dying.

Her story is powerful and engaging as is the way it is written. There is one thing that did have me raising my eyebrows though. She refers to her ‘secret escapades’ in Cape Town.
“I found an illegal underground gay bar and danced to music from the seventies, even though it was the nineties, while men in tight suits sniffed poppers and we all knew to be careful.”

My sister lived in Cape Town in the late eighties and nineties and when I was visiting her we would go to clubs and people really didn’t give a damn what you were doing. My sister and I were both open about our orientation and publicly demonstrative with our partners. People in Cape Town really didn’t care and it was always one of the most liberal cities in our country. In 1996 our post-Apartheid constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation.

I will concede that Vannicola’s experience and perception is her own and that may be how she genuinely felt. Perhaps my perception is coloured by the fact that I was from a more conservative city and Cape Town seemed so free and accepting. Other than that this is a superb autobiography and well worth reading even though it is not an easy read.

Book received from Netgalley and Dundurn Press for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley, Dundurn and the incredible Ms. Joanne Vannicola for the opportunity to read this advanced Readers Copy of "All We Knew But Couldn't Say".

This is an absolutely heartbreaking memoir that will make you cry, make you angry, and make you want to do something to change the world.

This is the no holds barred story of abuses; physical, sexual, child, body and drugs.
This is the story of a child actor, all alone, trying to survive in the industry.

This is the story of a queer teen trying to fit in.

This is the story of a Lesbian actor looking to fit in a heterosexual misogynistic Hollywood.

This is the courageous story of one amazing powerhouse of a women who fought to survive...
who fought for a voice...
who fought to love...
who fought for an identity.

She is a Heroine.
This is Herstory.

5 stars
A MUST READ!
Published 25 June 2019

#AllWeKnewButCouldntSay
#NetGalley
#LGBTQ2
#LGBTQIA
#Pride

*Disclaimer: I was sent a review copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Content warnings for suicide ideation, physical and sexual abuse, drug abuse and eating disorders.

Joanne Vannicola, the award-winning actress, activist, and writer, gives us an astoundingly honest account of her life. Vannicola grew up with a sexually abusive mother and a physically abusive father, and she tells her story of how she had to fend for herself, and go through the brutal battles with anorexia, drugs, and alcohol before the age of 15. She also shares her experiences of being in the acting industry and what it was like to be a child performer, while also learning about and discovering her sexuality. Despite her trauma, throughout the memoir, Vannicola demonstrates the need to write her own story and the power of writing and explaining her past in a way she has control over.

To put it plainly, sometimes this book was hard to read due to Vannicola’s insight. One such horror was learning about how her body, and other children’s bodies, in show business, were regulated at such a young age – Vannicola was required to undertake “image consultant” lessons at just age twelve. Horror lies in the fact that their bodies, and in extension, their being, were treated as commodities to be neatly packaged and sold to the cameras. Horror lies in the sexualisation of the child actors, something we still see today in modern media in how young stars, particularly girls, are forced to mature too quickly.

It is also hard to read about how the abuse she experienced was ignored or overlooked by those around her, and the reader shares the same sense of betrayal Vannicola feels when those even closest to her participated in this willful ignorance and denial. Vannicola even explains how she was rejected in feminist circles, a place which should be a safe space, for speaking out about her abuse. She reminds us that we all have power to harm the vulnerable, that mothers must also be held accountable.

“No one talked about women who hurt women. I didn’t want to take away from the larger conversations about sexism, racism, or male violence against women, but when I started to ask or mention the idea of women as perpetrators, I was chastised. It kept me out of the circle, unable to speak to it because the space was needed to talk about misogyny.”

Just because her experience is less common, Vannicola’s story shows how this abuse is just as painfully real.

Vannicola’s haunting and lyrical prose often made me forget I was reading a memoir and not an ingeniously crafted novel. Her writing brings us intimately and sometimes frighteningly close to her. However, that is not to say that readers ever forget these experiences and trauma were anything but real and experienced. Vannicola’s prose is compelling and honest, to a point that I felt sucked into her perspective and with her in the moments of her childhood when she experiences fear and horror; I warn some readers that this could be deeply upsetting and disturbing. Whilst being a master of detail and depicting emotion, Vannicola’s prose also excels in its cinematic quality, as I could vividly imagine all the locations she describes.

One of the uplifting parts of the novel was the process in which Vannicola finds a way to live her authentic self. Much of the grief in the novel stems from Vannicola feeling as if she had to regulate the image of herself to appease others, whether this be in her appearance and weight, or her sexuality. A lot of the queer memoirs I have read so far have been about living one’s truth and Vannicola’s story is no exception. She recounts how she had to unwillingly hide her sexuality until she absolutely could not do it anymore, documenting the moment that she decided not to allow herself to hide, even if it cost her own career.

Vannicola uses the spaces of the page to work through her trauma and creates a place where she can both confide the darkness of her life but also a place where her thoughts, voice, and identity can exist without restriction. Vannicola teaches us how to live, rather than just survive in fear. This book allows for this separate existence, despite so much of the story being shadowed over by the figure of her mother. There is overall something powerfully restorative in Vannicola being able to finally tell us all she knew but couldn’t say.