4.5 "hazy, naive, cathartic" stars !!

Thank you to Netgalley, Zone 3 Press and the memoirist for an ecopy. This edition was released November 2018.

So I know I will sleep little this evening. I will be reflecting on this memoir and how it brings some of my own sad and painful memories to the surface. I will have a good couple of cries and remember my mama and papa and how much I miss them so. I will reflect on my own joys, my past loves and events that I rarely give space too. This is what excellent memoir does...helps us go into ourselves and consolidates so that we can give our current lives more meaning and gratitude....

This is an immensely touching memoir of a woman looking back at her white poverty, Christian fundamentalist upbringing and deprivations and humiliations aplenty. This ride through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood is full of happenings, abuses, but also plenty of love. We travel through 1960s and 1970s California, Colorado and Montana. We meet individuals both stern and gentle and trying to make peace with God, the end of the World and still putting food on the table. Interspersed with these many vignettes, the memoirist shares her wisdoms gained, emptinesses that can never be filled and a resignation that this is her life and she will continue to make progress while attempts at peace, forgiveness and conciliation trickle forth.

There is both a naviete and self-centredness that pervade these accounts. Yet despite being immersed in memories, reveries, emotions and events I never felt that I was able to grasp this memoirist's essence and perhaps this might be the biggest loss....

A thank you to Ms. Beard with hopes that her current life is full of love and serenity....

'An Imperfect Rapture' is one of those books that left me almost silent. Silent because again I got insight in how lucky and privileged my life has been.

Kelly J. Beard describes in this book how she grew from a young girl into the woman she is now. It is a story that shows what (growing up in) poverty, mental illness, abuse and cult-like churches can do to someone. That it were sheer stubbornness and a lot of work that got her out of that world, as far as that will ever be possible.

I want to thank Kelly for telling the story. It must have taken a lot of courage to write this.

I tend to see Kelly's experiences as a result of growing up in abuse, not Christianity. She describes a brutally abusive and manipulative father. Sometimes abusers will use twist scripture to fit their narrative, but that is not the fault of God or Christianity. It is 100% the fault of the abuser. Her descriptions in this novel are nothing like the loving evangelical Christian home I grew up in.

This book was well written and Kelly unflinchingly described her abusive childhood in great detail.

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley. My review is voluntary.