Shrapnel in the San Fernando Valley

The embroidered words ‘My Grace is sufficient for thee’ hang over my desk as I write this review. I’m not religious but I suppose that line resonates with me because it proclaims the transformative power of weakness which is really the axis upon which all great art revolves. From our pain, beauty flows. In this absorbing memoir (I started in the bright, morning light and finished in darkness), Carol Es rather courageously articulates a catalogue of trauma and abuse that, paradoxically, empowers her not simply to survive but to nurture, to create, to love. Despite her demons (or, perhaps, emboldened by them), she escapes the suffocating cult-grip of Scientology while also forging an acclaimed career as an artist and now writer in the process. Yes, the narrative of family dysfunction, addiction, depression, etc can seem like tired ground in trendy confessional memoirs but there is a lot of meat to chew on here. Her exposé of Scientology’s grim ruthlessness and control is a story in itself (and a brave one given their reputation for revenge) but, within that, are searingly painful episodes of abuse, betrayal and illness and, within that, equally compelling moments of love, poignancy and humour. Within these narratives, still further tangents. Like life itself, these contrasting episodes grind and scrape like tectonic plates but that is what gives the book authenticity. Life is chaos; moments of grace crash into numbing despair and Es often writes like a 3 am phone call or a handbrake turn. Instability and potential freefall haunt every corner.  Like Charles Bukowski’s ‘Ham on Rye’, this book had so many moments like half-remembered fragments of my own childhood. She talks of watching the fish in a hospital aquarium and thinking about death. I’m sure I’ve been there, too. I know the bedrooms, the lighting, the scents and sidewalks she described. Nothing here felt contrived. Many of her experiences felt like my own life and, in her pain, I felt oddly strengthened. Such is the power of fine art at its finest.