Girl A by Abigail Dean

 

She was known as Girl A.  She was the one who set herself and her siblings free from the house of horrors they were confined in.  She was the one who scrapped her flesh raw to escape from the chains, broke a window cutting herself on the glass and jumped from the roof shattering her leg but managing to get to the road and help.  Her real name was Lex Gracie and there were seven siblings in the family, the family where her father went mad and her mother did nothing to help.

The story exploded in the press and everyone knew their story.  The children required extensive medical and dental care, the starvation taking its toll on their bodies.  Having lost both their parents that day as the police took over, once the medical world released them the children were split up and adopted out to separate families.  It was felt that it would be best if the children didn't interact but tried to adjust to a different life and forget the horrors.

Grown now, Lex has finally returned to England.  Her mother has died in prison and someone has to deal with the death and the small estate.  Lex has grown up to be a problem solver, a high flyer in a corporation that arranges company mergers.  She is the best suited to deal with the legal implications left behind.  Other siblings have not dealt with the past as well as she.  One is a lecturer who uses the past as a springboard for fame.  Others have turned to religion or spent their lives in mental care.  Some of the youngest ones don't even know who they are.  As Lex talked with each of her siblings, she finds that their memories don't always jibe and each person remembers events differently or has different pieces of the puzzle.  Can she construct a whole picture from the memories they all have?

This is a debut novel.  Abigail Dean is a lawyer and former bookseller.  The novel explores the meaning of family when family goes awry.  The headlines regularly note cases such as these where a parent goes mad and power hungry and sets up elaborate rules with corresponding punishments for those who live with them.  It is heartbreaking to realize how many people, especially children, are captured in situations where their basic human needs are held against them and their days a long story of horror and deprivation.  The reader will come to know the mechanisms the siblings use to accept their pasts and to put the story together from the shifting memories each child has.  This book is recommended for readers of family relationships.