The Incest Diary

Anonymous

Jul 2017 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this eBook

“In the fairy tales about father–daughter incest—‘The Girl Without Hands,’ ‘Thousand Furs,’ the original ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Donkey Skin,’ and the stories of Saint Dymphna, patron saint of incest survivors—the daughters are all as you would expect them to be: horrified by their father’s sexual advances. They do everything in their power to escape. But I didn’t. A child can’t escape. And later, when I could, it was too late.”


Throughout her childhood and adolescence, the anonymous author of The Incest Diary was raped by her father. Beneath a veneer of normal family life, she grew up in and around this all-encompassing secret. Her sexual relationship with her father lasted, off and on, into her twenties. It formed her world, and it formed her deepest fears and desires. Even after she broke away—even as she grew into an independent and adventurous young woman—she continued to seek out new versions of the violence, submission, and secrecy she had struggled to leave behind.

In this graphic and harrowing memoir, the author revisits her early traumas and their aftermath—not from a clinical distance, but from deep within—to explore the ways in which her father’s abuse shaped her, and still does. As a matter of psychic survival, she became both a sexual object and a detached observer, a dutiful daughter and the protector of a dirty secret. And then, years later, she made herself write it down.

With lyric concision, in vignettes of almost unbearable intensity, this writer tells a story that is shocking but that will ring true to many other survivors of abuse. It has never been faced so directly on the page.

Ratings and reviews

A truly terrible and disheartening memoir. Like everyone else who reads this book, I am apologetic on behalf of the parts of humanity that allowed this story to ever be real (as if that is enough consolation). As disturbing as it is to read, this book deserves 5 stars for the traumas of its author, her beauty and intelligence in how she wrote it, and the impact it should make as a feminist text and testament to the great sexual reforms we need as a species.

Terribly harrowing, devastatingly truthful and sadly captivating. As I turned the page I could not believe what I was reading. Beautifully written in short synopsis' of her life. Thank you for your truth and your story.

About the author

The author is anonymous.