Product Description

When Alice was a teenager, strange things started happening to her. Hours of her life simply disappeared. She'd hear voices shouting at her, telling her she was useless. And the nightmares that had haunted her since early childhood, scenes of men abusing her, became more detailed . . . more real. Staring at herself in the mirror she'd catch her face changing, as if someone else was looking out through her eyes.

In Today I'm Alice, she describes her extraordinary journey from a teenage girl battling anorexia and OCD, drowning the voices with alcohol, to a young woman slipping further and further into mental illness. It was only after years lost in institutions that she was correctly diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. When her alternative personalities were revealed in therapy she discovered how each one had their own memories of abuse and a full picture of her childhood finally emerged. As she learned to live with her many 'alters', she set out to confront the man who had caused her unbearable pain.

Moving and ultimately inspiring, this is a gripping account of a rare condition, and the remarkable story of a courageous woman.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55569 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'This isn't a misery memoir, but an account of mental illness that's so beautifully written it reminded me of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Jamieson survived 100 overdoses, alcoholism and cocaine addiction to find love with a church warden. You won't be able to get her story out of your head.' -- London Lite

Review
'Alice's book, Today I'm Alice, is a compelling account of the strategies she has used to survive more than two decades of grotesque sexual, physical and emotional harm... Her book tells this story in the manner of a curtain being drawn back.'

Review
'an intelligent, first hand account of mental illness, written by a remarkable woman still learning to live with herself.'

Customer Reviews

Tortuous Journey
I was so moved listening to Lesley Joseph interviewing Alice Jamieson on Radio London, I went straight out to get the book. Alice makes us understand in clear, uncompromising prose, how a child tries to handle horrific abuse; in her case, pretending that the bad things were happening not to her but to 'others.'

You feel that you are right there with Alice as she is growing up, trying to make sense of her bad dreams and her compulsive washing and running, as she tries to cleanse herself of--she does not know what. How she finally acknowledges her abuse and comes to terms with how it affected her personality takes many painful years.

Books like this are important because children cannot protect themselves from abuse and adults must be more vigilant to telltale signs that abuse is taking place. This is an extraordinary book, beautifully written.

Well written misery memoir
In the product description this book was described as 'not a misery memoir'. But that's exactly what it is. It's not a genre I enjoy; reading this kind of book feels like the modern equivalent of paying to see the inmates in Bedlam during Victorian times.

I ordered the book because of the mental health aspect, to learn more about what it was like to have multiple personalities. In that respect I thought it was going to be more in the style of Kay Jamison's 'An Unquiet Mind', however I felt there was a lot of focus on the sexual abuse aspect, with repeated descriptions of what happened to the author in her childhood. Cathartic for the author, perhaps, but somewhat prurient in the case of the reader.

I did appreciate the insight into the author's disorder, and feel that I understand it more than I did. Mental illness and psychological disorders are still seen in a different way to physical illness, and anything that helps to change this perception is a good thing. However, I would have been interested to read more about the illness itself, perhaps on a more technical basis, however the nature of the book prevents that. It's a shame that there doesn't seem to be a midway point between the 'misery memoir' and academic texts for those of us who want something a bit more challenging to read, and to develop more understanding about what exactly is happening with the mind during its attempts to cope with horrific events, but for whom the academic approach is rather clinical and non-personal.

On the whole, the book is well-written account of childhood sexual abuse and the author's means of coping with it.

Disturbing, brutal, horrific, lost for words, but a beautiful book.
I am really struggling with what to write as a review for this novel, I finished it nearly a week ago and have sat down to review it half a dozen times and failed each time....

The novel itself is amazingly well written, its humorous and tragic, thought provoking and terrifying. But at the same time I felt that I couldn't really connect with Alice, in some ways I think the disconnect was the horror of what had happened to her and simple manner of fact description of the sexual abuse, which I found in no way prurient or sensationalistic. In some ways the descriptions where to clinical/dispassionate for me, I found many other parts of the novel to be far more emotional such as the descriptions of her travelling and her relationship with her grandfather and mother.

Reading other reviews I have seen many mentions of 'misery memoir' and feel that isn't a label I would apply to this book, in no way does the author dwell on her pain or suffering (although it often mentioned) that isn't the focus of this novel, that was her mental health problems and her relationship(s) with the NHS and various health professionals, which is where my biggest criticism of the novel comes in, I wish a little bit more time had been spent on this and the book had investigated how and why she reacted to the various professionals in the manner she did. I don't mean this as a criticism of her actions but more to enlighten as to the problems she faced and how she thought/thinks things might be improved.

At the end of the day this is a horrific tale of the struggle of a girl/woman to come to terms with what was done to her, its her personal tale and not a case study / medical text book. My heart goes out to Alice, which is how I would expect any reader of this book to react.