Download Your Copy Wholly Unraveled: A Memoir Conceived By Keele Burgin File Format Audio Book

appreciate the authors willingness to share her story, She endured pain and abuse that many people cannot even imagine and that too many others dont have to imagine, I am filled with admiration that she has been able to build a life that has transcended the choices of those who would not keep her safe.


Her writing has an abbreviated tautness to it that underscores the jagged edges of her memories, The storytelling was coherent, with a lot of lovely use of language and description, That being said, there is a kind of flatness to the narrative, not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way that reminded me of someone telling a story while under the influence of a truth serum or something.
This was not an easy story to tell, and the need to get it out of her did not solve that problem.
Her pain is still evident in every word, The change in tone in the final acknowledgements was a good resolution for me I appreciated a softer, realer understanding of the person she is now.


I hope she keeps writing, especially with her stated aim of helping and empowering women, That is just a good thing and the world needs all the goodness it can get, Not only did I not finish this book, I didn't even start it, but I'm leaving this here for other people who would also want to know about the following warning:

Although the author and I call the same place home and she lives lived in the coolest house in town, I have been warned that there is at least one scene of horrible, horrible animal abuse in this book, which is a huge freakout trigger for me, and I know for others as well.
I'm disappointed I won't be able to read Keele's story, but the tradeoff is not worth it to me,

Thanks to the folks in the Reader QampA section who confirmed the disturbing content, and to the reviewer who referenced it enough to tip me off that I should definitely get a confirmation before I attempted to read it.
I'm pretty sure I dodged a bullet,

ADDENDUM: If you are one of my fellow animal hypersensitives, DO NOT READ THE ANSWERS TO MY READER QampA QUESTION, mentioned above.
One responder took it upon herself to actually detail the animal abuse for us, I reported to Goodreads asking for help, but I don't know if it's technicall against their terms of use to be overtly cruel to people Just don't read the long, second answer.
Probably don't even let it in your field of vision, This is a very hard story to listen to, Trigger warnings all over the place, However, I am honored that Kathleen/Keele is willing to share her story with us, for those who have space to listen.
I find it really hard to read critical reviews of a book like this the author is fully entitled to withhold some of the answers to the "why" questions and some of the gaps in the timeline.
For me, these omissions did not detract from the power of her story, It was worth reading just for one very powerful scene near the end of the book that isn't even directly about Kathleen.
Such a beautiful, powerful, moving picture, and the conclusions that Kathleen makes about God from this encounter, . just wow. People who have not had a traumatic childhood don't understand the lasting impact it leaves, As I read Keele Burgin's book I remembered the trauma in my own childhood, I bled through the pages for her and knew that healing would be her life's greatest challenge, Most people who've been through what she experienced never heal, As with my own book, The PaleFaced Lie, readers were very critical of my mistakes and what I left out, They don't understand the need to protect other's privacy, I was struck by how readers decided that Keele skimmed over her own faults and how she got through her ordeal, You wrote passionately about her mistakes without sugar coating any of it, Keele and I came to the exact same conclusion: "I could not have written this book without going back to my childhood and doing the work to identify what happened and internalize what happened.
" These are powerful words with a powerful message for all of us who were damaged beyond comprehension by horrific parents, For those who have not been through this type of experience, you have no idea how hard it is to believe you are a good person, a person worthy of a happy life.
And luckily you will never know, This is a brave, courageous book by a truly great writer and person, I cried for her until the end knowing how how hard she fought to get free of her demons, I highly recommend this book though it is not for the faint at heart, Keele's message will resonate long after you have finished, You will root for her and know that she is helping countless others by sharing her story, starting with me, Bravo Keele, I feel as though we have known each other always, Read this book, it will help you understand that childhood is a city we never leave, That is great if it was a good childhood but it is a life sentence if you have not, Lacks coherence and cohesiveness. The book starts with a onedimensional family of supposed Catholics I say "supposed" because they read like a Protestant's concept of Roman Catholicism and they make a great deal of fuss about speaking in tongues, which is primarily the focus of Protestant fundamentalists, not Catholics: an abusive father, a refrigerator mother who enables the father's abuse, and sisters so lacking in personality as to be interchangeable.
After a while, the book jumps to Orange is the New Black as Kathleen suffers from eating disorders and gets involved with a drug dealer.
Finally, and most improbably of all, Kathleen goes to Madonna House out in the Canadian woodswhich, again, seemed far more Protestant than Catholicand somehow overcomes her numerous psychological problems simply by learning to eat regularly because eating disorders are just that easy to overcome and by observing another angry woman.
Oh, and her father tracks her down to Madonna House and orders her to come home, Kathleen defies him and says no, There are no consequences for this, I had to wonder why he would want Kathleen back at the family homestead when he nearly shot her to death when she was a child.


The entire book is like that, Kathleen has no insights about herself or her parents events merely happen randomly, The characters are as flat as paper dolls, In fact, they are more tropes than people, sitelink Archnemesis Dad, sitelink Big Sister Bully, sitelink Parental Neglect, And so on.

Moreover, there are enough plotholes to drive a convoy of Mack trucks through, The father shoots a horse and fires a trainer with no consequences whatsoever, and there is no explanation for this, Kathleen commits identity theft and is caught, . . and somehow manages to sidestep prison, though it's not explained how, This makes little sense, as the sister who likes Kathleen least is the one whose identity Kathleen steals, and Mary would certainly be hearing from creditors about debts that her thieving sister had incurred in Mary's name.
There's a paper trail a mile wide, but Kathleen is not punished for her misdeeds, Most of all, I could not understand why someone whose life had been made a misery because of the alleged religious beliefs of two dictatorial men would move to a cultlike halfway house in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.
. . and why she would stay there for more than two seconds, because all of the work was either creepy going down into an unlit root cellar or worthless washing boogerfilled cloth handkerchiefs by hand instead of using washing machines.
Nor is there an explanation for how her father discovered that Kathleen was at Madonna House, especially since she had had no contact with him or the rest of her blood relatives for years.


All in all, the book reads like an incomplete first draft, This book reads like a diary, The narrative is choppy and all over the place, but the story remains intact, By the end I was enjoying it, but for a good portion I was just annoyed, I

The implication that the Catholic church allowed or even endorsed many of the socalled "leaders," like the author's father is repugnant.


It's an interesting memoir, but flawed in execution, Empowering Pain

This book make my heart tremble, my memories flown and give me a sense of been, what a great and powerful story, with blessing reality that more than many are hiding painfully.
Loved this story. Could not put it down, Human beings tend to avoid discomfort this has likely become hardwired into our DNA after decades of evolution, Sometimes, however, feeling uncomfortable isn't all bad, especially when treading outside our comfort zone leads to a better understanding of the world around us, for better or worse.
This book pulled me in many directions, some of them profoundly uncomfortable, I am not easily upset by what I read and it made me squirm at times, Dont say I didnt warn you,

Initially, I was interested in this book after seeing the perhaps

inevitable comparisons to Tara Westovers Educated, which I absolutely loved, in many reviews when it was first released.
I immediately downloaded it. Despite my initial interest, life happened, and the title sat languishing in my Kindle for six months before I got a chance to start it.
I finally began reading it, only to discover that I had a really, really hard time getting into it, This was strange, because it is exactly the kind of intense, harrowing, narrative memoir that I tend to gravitate towards like a moth to a flame.
I ended up setting it aside for another few months, during which I completed a handful of other books including a few memoirs before picking it up again and finally getting caught up in the story of Kylee Burgin, the daughter of an abusive, domineering and mercurial religious cult leader father and a docile, looktheotherway and therefore complicit mother.


As for the comparisons to Educated, I believe they are valid, to a point, but perhaps not particularly apt, While there are definitely some similarities, such as the toxic combination of the physically and mentally abusive father and the passively neglectful mother, this is where the similarities mostly end.
To describe these two memoirs as similar, does, I think, an injustice to one major difference Westover was raised in a rural environment in abject poverty, while Burgin was raised in an urban, wealthy household.
Where Westover had to work doing manual labor to earn a meager living, Burgin lived in a mansion with servants, These are, in some ways literally, different worlds, That said, there are touchstones that the two womens stories share the religious zealots justification for abuse and male domination, the submissive mother who defers to the domineering father, and myriad other, smaller similarities that I surmise many abused women share.


The narrative structure and writing style of Burgins book is different than Westovers though, and the thread of melancholy that weaves through its pages is both unique in feel and universal in scope.
Kylee Burgin is a strong writer, and her use of language to convey emotion is clearly evident in these pages, Descriptions of pivotal events often manage to be at once jarring and fluid, a skill that I have to come to admire and respect in my extensive memoir reading.
Burgins journey from abused child, to rebellious teenager, to introspective adult turns out to be compelling, despite some odd organizational choices, Both books were brutal, beautiful reads that leave one with the sense that even extreme obstacles can be overcome, if not forgotten.
Overall, I found this to be a difficult but ultimately rewarding read, .