A Child Called "It" - Book review

The autobiographical book A Child Called "It" by David Pelzer is one of those books that you can't stand to continue reading but you can't put down, either. Pelzer details his life as a virtual slave to his mother who, for some reason - alcoholism, mental illness, or whatever - singles him out from his other siblings and torments him as much as occurs in prison for war prisoners. He was continually beaten, starved, poisoned as well as subjected continually to psychological tormented. I find it singularly unusual that the rest of the family including the father assist in this cruel torture. The abuses continue getting worse with each chapter, almost like the mother is in some sort of competition to see if she can top her worst. Or is this just in the boy's recollection?

I think the subtitle, "One Child's Courage to Survive", is a bit misleading since during most of the book we are reading not about courage but about determination and fortitude, downright willfulness "not to let the bitch get me". And I can't help but think that he embellished his story, maybe from accounts of prisoners or books and magazines that were popular in that era.

The book starts with the description of the the boy's eventual release, his freedom . I found that to be a useful literary device to minimize the concern that the abuse never ends.

Not for the weak of stomach, the book supposedly has a morale but the only one I could see was we need to have mandated reports do their job and we should back them up.