Customer Reviews
frightening and truly amazing - By: E. J. Bisacre, 07 Aug 2008 
A Child Called 'It'
I first read this book 4 years ago whilst on a sun bedin Spain. As soon as I began, I did not put the book down & ended up with bad sunburn.
What an extraordinary & horribly disturbing tale. Dave tells us about the abuse he suffered from his mother, & the distress of his father abandoning him, throwing him into a lonely & lost world. Dave describes the distressing scenarios which we as readers cannot swallowin words - stories of starvation, beatings, mental torture & physical agaony.
The words are written from the perspective of when he was very young, so it is simple to read & very straight forward. As you read his other books you realise how complex he grew to be.
I would only recommend this to people with a strong stomach - ir to those who need their own lives put into a little perspective.
A hard book to like - By: noggy1810, 07 Aug 2008 
As this book is autobiographical you would hate to be too critical. The characters are real as is the plot so what happened happened. However having not ever been a victim of child abuse or had any encounter with its horrors I found this book a little boring. What happened to David was disgusting & this book just chronicles years of abuse & describesin detail many types of torture. After reading it, I said to myself wasn't that dreadful & rolled over & fell asleep without giving it a second thought. I don't think that that is what the author hadin mind.
Heartbreaking - By: Holly Ford, 19 Jul 2008 I read one of the most horrific parts of this book on a train, & had to bite my tongue to stop myself from sobbing. The sort of aubse Dave went through doesn't bare thinking about. Don't read this book unless you're prepared for it to leave a perminant mark on you.
Traumatic - By: LindyLouMac, 10 Jul 2008 I knew that this would be a traumatic read & subconsciously I have put off reading it. As it has been sitting on our bookshelves for a little over two years I decided I should not put it off for any longer.
It is very short & I read itin its entirety yesterday afternoon. Certainly not a book one reads for pleasure or relaxation. It is not a story just the horrendous facts of a little boys life from the ages of four to twelve. I squirmedin horror as I read this example of the truth being so much scarier than fiction.
Dave Pelzer's young life was a living hell with a Mother who physically & mentally tortured him. She was obviously a very disturbed woman but why was it that his brothers & his Fatherin particular, were unwilling or unable to stand up to her?
As this all happened over thirty years ago, one can only hope that nowadays such horrific cases of child abuse would never have gone for so long. I really cannot understand why it was so very difficult for the school to rescue David from this situation, which they did eventually. It seemed to take them an eternity to gather the facts they needed! Why oh why did this child not have the strength to take the help that was tentatively offered at various times & just refuse to go home. I believe it was because he was so very very scared that if he did so no one would believe him & he would have ended up a murder victim. It seems to me that against all odds Dave Pelzer showed amazing strength of spirit & survived.
At times it seems unreal & is certainly very disturbing, however child abuse is sadly a realityin our society & for that reason I am glad that I decided to read this account.
I will read the sequel `The Lost Boy' soon as it is also waiting on the bookshelves. It covers the period from age twelve to eighteen, when after his prayers were answered & he was rescued he became a foster child.
I gave this 5 stars not because it was a good bookin the literary sense but because it is a bravely related memoir.
A horrific read... - By: h, 09 Jul 2008 
I bought this book when it first came out & read itin one sitting. It is one of the few books to reduce me to tearsin sympathy for the writer.
I thought it took a lot of courage for Dave Pelzer to write this book (and the ones after) as it's obviously not an easy thing to relive never mind write & share with the rest of society.
It is such a heart wrenching account of his childhood & it does make you think how his own mother could be so evil & the amount of child abuse that goes unspoken about as it's still kind of a taboo subject.
The eventsin this book are horrific & it's hard to believe how a little boy could fight & survive them.
Some of the other reviews of this book go on about the writing style & the editors not doing their job properly but does it need to be written perfectly as long as it gets his message across? As i said before it's not an easy thing to relive never mind write about so who cares if its not fantastically written, read the book for what it is, a terrifying account of child abuse & how one boy managed to get out of the situation & get on with his life no matter how hard it was at times.
