Audiobook8 hours
The Girl Factory: A Memoir
Written by Karen Dietrich
Narrated by Cassandra Campbell
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
It's 1985 in a small factory town near Pittsburgh. Eight-year-old Karen's parents are lifelong workers at the Anchor Glass plant, where one Saturday, an employee goes on a shooting spree, killing four supervisors, then himself. This event splits the young girl's life open, and like her mother, she begins to seek comfort in obsessive rituals and superstitions.
This beautifully evocative memoir chronicles the next fourteen years, as Karen moves through girlhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. It illuminates small-town factory life; explores a complicated mother-daughter bond; thoughtfully unfolds a smart but insecure girl's coming of age; achingly recounts her attempts to use sex to fit in; and ultimately uncovers the buried secret from her childhood-a medical file with an unbearable report.
The Girl Factory deftly travels the intersections of memory and origin. Karen's body remembers details her mind has tried to control. As the young woman mines her interior landscape for answers, certain questions persist. Where does memory live-in the body or the mind? And can you rewrite the story of your past?
This beautifully evocative memoir chronicles the next fourteen years, as Karen moves through girlhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. It illuminates small-town factory life; explores a complicated mother-daughter bond; thoughtfully unfolds a smart but insecure girl's coming of age; achingly recounts her attempts to use sex to fit in; and ultimately uncovers the buried secret from her childhood-a medical file with an unbearable report.
The Girl Factory deftly travels the intersections of memory and origin. Karen's body remembers details her mind has tried to control. As the young woman mines her interior landscape for answers, certain questions persist. Where does memory live-in the body or the mind? And can you rewrite the story of your past?
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Reviews for The Girl Factory
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received an ARC of The Girl Factory through the Goodreads Giveaways program. The Girl Factory details the life of Karen Dietrich as she maneuvers her way through various friendships and a complicated mother daughter bond. Although, Karen is a precocious child and highly intelligent, she struggles after elementary school with building and maintaining relationships. Karen also seems to look for validation from others and seeks out friends who are at times a bad influence. When a long buried family secret is revealed in chapter 25 all the pieces come together and the reader can see the cause of much of the author's behavior. The Girl Factory was a dark and powerfully written memoir which reveals several painful and intimate events in her life. I enjoyed reading the book and applaud the courage it took to share her story. Well done!