SILENTLY SAID is an honest, intimate and brave memoir. Subtitled “A Journey Through Illness and Addiction” the story Diana Lee tells is not of her own struggles with ill health and alcohol but those of her immediate family and how caring for them impacted her life. When Lee was a young girl her mother was struck down by a mystery illness which ultimately resulted in her having to be permanently cared for in hospital. Her father took on the responsibility of bringing up the family and, as recounted in the early chapters of the book, Lee and her sister and brothers had as normal a childhood as could be expected with a mother they could only visit infrequently.
As time passed their troubled father began to rely more and more heavily on self-medicating with alcohol. By the time Lee was 19 the situation had become so bad that she sought help and advice on being the child of an alcoholic at a local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Later, Lee’s sister Kimberley was diagnosed with the same illness as their mother resulting in bouts of psychosis where she would talk to herself. The passages recalling the confusion and stress of having to deal with a beloved family member facing her “ghosties”, the term her sister used for her psychosis, are well written and very moving.
In the preface the author admits that she had been previously reticent about publishing the work because, as she puts it, she was “concerned about outing myself and the way people would perceive me.” Indeed much of the book is deeply personal but Lee’s commendable honesty and openness is the key factor that makes sharing her journey so rewarding. Added to this willingness to divulge private moments are numerous more lyrical passages that skillfully recall the past by focusing on small details like her joy at being able to go shopping for new clothes rather than her usual hand-me-downs or a memory of talking on a telephone in a hallway with its small table and notepad and pen.
Diana Lee’s SILENTLY SAID reveals intimate details of her life story with refreshing candor. In caring for her mother and sister and coping with her father’s alcoholism she reveals understanding and compassion and succeeds in evoking obviously difficult memories with touchingly simple prose.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader