Nov 26 2007
Should I buy and read them or not?
I came across some reviews of the following books: Don’t Tell Mummy and When Daddy Comes Home, by Toni Maguire.
They are not fictions, i.e. they are narrated by the real child and written/recorded by Toni Maguire. They are true story.
I felt like I should buy the books, to support the victim’s courage in revealing her suffer. She is a victim of domestic violence (molested and raped by her own father under her mother’s nose, who delibrately ignored). This kind of things actually happen everywhere, and people tend to get numb. Awareness is there, but nothing is done or could be done. We don’t know why these mothers are not protecting their children. Is a sad thing to even know or read about.
Yes, it is the sadness in preventing me to buy them. And I also dislike the fact that people is making money from the victim’s suffer – the author and the publisher. But if the victim is brave enough to tell her own sotry, shouldn’t I support her? And what if it can help her to make a living with that? It is a struggle for me – coz I don’t know where she fits in the value chain.
Another reason prevented me from buying, is that I do not know the writer’s skill. Long ago, I bought a book ‘Sold’. The story is real, and is very sad. Unfortunately the writer is not very good at writing it. Perhaps he is trying to ‘report’ the truth without adding any sensational spices, hence rather boring to be read. It is boring because the author used very limited words and phrases, with very flat and monotonous sentenses. Though I highly recommend this book for its content, my experience with that book hinders me from buying these 2 books of Toni Maguire’s.
BTW, for the content of the above book ‘Sold’, I still recommend it –> It is about a younger at the age of 15, and her sister aged 13, being sold by their father to Yemen into marriage. They were from Birmingham with Yemeni origin. They had to live in horrible situations, having to be ‘raped’, giving birth the most ‘natural’ way, etc, at that young age. She escaped but not her sister. The copy on sale now has her latest update. I’m not sure how different it is from my copy – which ended with suspecion that her sister was dead in giving birth to her n’th kid. Very sad…
Hmm… still struggling to decide whether I should buy the Toni Maguire’s books. I can still think about it slowly, since I still have a big carton of books (maybe 40+?) to read. 
I am always very greedy, reading one book and eyeing on others. Hahaha!
