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After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
A fierce memoir of a mother’s murder, a daughter’s coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her mission to know the woman who gave her life.
When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah’s bedroom.
The killer escaped unseen; it would take the police twelve years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction—all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah’s questions only grew. She wanted to understand her mother’s life, not just her final hours, and so she began a personal investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, taking her deep into the abiding darkness of a small American town.
Told in searing prose, After the Eclipse is a luminous memoir of uncomfortable truth and terrible beauty, an exquisite memorial for a mother stolen from her daughter, and a blazingly successful attempt to cast light on her life once more.
When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah’s bedroom.
The killer escaped unseen; it would take the police twelve years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction—all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah’s questions only grew. She wanted to understand her mother’s life, not just her final hours, and so she began a personal investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, taking her deep into the abiding darkness of a small American town.
Told in searing prose, After the Eclipse is a luminous memoir of uncomfortable truth and terrible beauty, an exquisite memorial for a mother stolen from her daughter, and a blazingly successful attempt to cast light on her life once more.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published September 26, 2017
About the author
Sarah Perry
2 books188 followersSarah Perry (she/they) is the author of Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover (Mariner/HarperCollins, February 2025), and After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, September 2017), which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Recent short work includes a Huffington Post Personals essay that reached 1M+ readers and an essay for Cake Zine that was a nominee for the James Beard Foundation’s 2024 M. F. K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. Other essays have appeared in Elle Magazine, and Off Assignment, and the Guardian. More updates can be found on her website and on Instagram at @sarahperry100 Perry holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from Columbia University, has taught in the graduate programs at Columbia and the University of North Texas, and was the 2019 McGee Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Davidson College. She was a 2020-2022 Tulsa Artist Fellow and currently teaches in the MFA program at Colorado State University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 667 reviews
January 29, 2018
One of the best memoirs I've ever read. The writing was incredible and Perry's ability to both separate herself from the events that took place but also put you right at the heart of it with her is impressive and heart-wrenching. Definitely a book that I will be thinking about for quite some time. Highly recommend this but know that it's quite brutal at times due to the subject matter.
March 5, 2018
This book is for those who like memoirs, who want all the feels of a real person's experience, who especially enjoy the personal stories of those who overcome tragedies that would fell lesser men, who believe that often victims don't get their due in terms of the complexity of their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their choices. None of the foregoing describes me.
I read this for an IRL True Crime book club. My interest in true crime is driven by an appreciation for forensic science, for the connection of clues and evidence by investigators into a coherent whole that allows them to catch killers whose relationships to the victims aren't obvious and whose motivations are a puzzlement, at least initially. If your interest in true crime is similar to mine, this is not the book for you either. There is almost no substantive content in After the Eclipse relating to the investigation or how the police or DA developed their case. This is the personal story of the daughter of a crime victim, Sarah Perrym and her mother, Crystal, particularly, how Perry experienced the murder of her mother in the home they shared, when Sarah was 12, and the toll the subsequent investigation took on her life. It is quite sad, in parts, as you might imagine, although she ends up as the owner of an MFA, author of this book, and appears to have gotten it all together far better than many of us who have less baggage. ATE is also quite comprehensive in terms of the details of Perry's life and, further, the details of her mother's life. For the right reader, it wouldn't be excruciatingly long, but engaging. It is a tale of Perry's survival. It is also in large part her mother's tale. That tale needs to be of interest to you because much real estate is devoted to Crystal, the victim -- her childhood, her mother, her siblings, every boyfriend and SO that she chose, how often they fought, what they fought about, Crystal's preference in eyemakeup, her cleaning habits, the details of her job at the shoe factory, who attended the funeral and who didn't, who her best friend was and wasn't. Are you still with me? If you are, you might just be a memoir fan and this book could be a perfect choice for you.
When Crystal's murderer is identified, someone about whom the reader has heard no mention until that moment, there is no real reveal. Sure, his name is provided, but that's it. The sole major character in the real-life events (there are 2 others, far more minor) whom Perry never interviewed is ... you guessed it -- the murderer. Hence, After the Eclipse offers no payoff for a typical true-crime reader - understanding the crime, the criminal/s, how the criminals screwed up and were caught, what evidence was presented to the jury that clinched the verdict, etc.
I don't rate books on how they make me feel. If I did, this book would garner 1-star. I stayed up until 3 a.m. to finish it because I found it to be incredibly depressing. It wasn't the book for me. While I'm not typically one who buys into the "there's a reader for every book" mantra, in this case, there are many readers for this book - they read memoirs and want to know about victim impact and, perhaps how blue-collar female crime victims, in particular, are treated by the justice system and, more importantly, by their own families and communities. After the Eclipse is a well-written book intended for those readers. Not this reader.
I read this for an IRL True Crime book club. My interest in true crime is driven by an appreciation for forensic science, for the connection of clues and evidence by investigators into a coherent whole that allows them to catch killers whose relationships to the victims aren't obvious and whose motivations are a puzzlement, at least initially. If your interest in true crime is similar to mine, this is not the book for you either. There is almost no substantive content in After the Eclipse relating to the investigation or how the police or DA developed their case. This is the personal story of the daughter of a crime victim, Sarah Perrym and her mother, Crystal, particularly, how Perry experienced the murder of her mother in the home they shared, when Sarah was 12, and the toll the subsequent investigation took on her life. It is quite sad, in parts, as you might imagine, although she ends up as the owner of an MFA, author of this book, and appears to have gotten it all together far better than many of us who have less baggage. ATE is also quite comprehensive in terms of the details of Perry's life and, further, the details of her mother's life. For the right reader, it wouldn't be excruciatingly long, but engaging. It is a tale of Perry's survival. It is also in large part her mother's tale. That tale needs to be of interest to you because much real estate is devoted to Crystal, the victim -- her childhood, her mother, her siblings, every boyfriend and SO that she chose, how often they fought, what they fought about, Crystal's preference in eyemakeup, her cleaning habits, the details of her job at the shoe factory, who attended the funeral and who didn't, who her best friend was and wasn't. Are you still with me? If you are, you might just be a memoir fan and this book could be a perfect choice for you.
When Crystal's murderer is identified, someone about whom the reader has heard no mention until that moment, there is no real reveal. Sure, his name is provided, but that's it. The sole major character in the real-life events (there are 2 others, far more minor) whom Perry never interviewed is ... you guessed it -- the murderer. Hence, After the Eclipse offers no payoff for a typical true-crime reader - understanding the crime, the criminal/s, how the criminals screwed up and were caught, what evidence was presented to the jury that clinched the verdict, etc.
I don't rate books on how they make me feel. If I did, this book would garner 1-star. I stayed up until 3 a.m. to finish it because I found it to be incredibly depressing. It wasn't the book for me. While I'm not typically one who buys into the "there's a reader for every book" mantra, in this case, there are many readers for this book - they read memoirs and want to know about victim impact and, perhaps how blue-collar female crime victims, in particular, are treated by the justice system and, more importantly, by their own families and communities. After the Eclipse is a well-written book intended for those readers. Not this reader.
November 11, 2017
This is such a well-written and powerful read. Sarah Perry was only 12 years old when her mother was murdered as she lay sleeping in the next room. The murder was particularly brutal and vicious and Sarah heard it as it was happening. It would take 12 years to find the murderer.
Sarah’s story is one of “before” and “after” the murder. It is part memoir, part true crime/courtroom drama. But mostly it's the story of the close relationship she and her mother enjoyed, and the devastating years after the murder. Sarah was shunted off to live with various relatives and suffered the emotional effects of losing her mother in such a violent way.
The strength of the book is the humanity she brings to her mother. Her mother is not simply a statistic, she was a living, breathing, human being who had hopes and dreams and plans for the future. Sarah brings her to life on the page so I felt as if I knew Crystal, and what the immensity of the loss means to her daughter. Sarah tells us about the Crystal she knew as a young girl, and the more complete picture she has of her now. She is brutally honest as she tells us the flattering and the not-so-flattering stories of her mother.
This is a picture of grief, in all it’s rawness and pain, even now, many years later. The emotional and psychological toll on Sarah is heartbreaking. It’s the story of a small town, the attitudes and prejudices and the characters who inhabit it. Sarah’s story should have us all thinking about how we view violence against women, and about the men who inflict such violence against women.
I admire Sarah’s honesty and courage in telling her story and I can't help but think how so very proud her mother would be of her.
* many thanks to the author, Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review
Sarah’s story is one of “before” and “after” the murder. It is part memoir, part true crime/courtroom drama. But mostly it's the story of the close relationship she and her mother enjoyed, and the devastating years after the murder. Sarah was shunted off to live with various relatives and suffered the emotional effects of losing her mother in such a violent way.
The strength of the book is the humanity she brings to her mother. Her mother is not simply a statistic, she was a living, breathing, human being who had hopes and dreams and plans for the future. Sarah brings her to life on the page so I felt as if I knew Crystal, and what the immensity of the loss means to her daughter. Sarah tells us about the Crystal she knew as a young girl, and the more complete picture she has of her now. She is brutally honest as she tells us the flattering and the not-so-flattering stories of her mother.
This is a picture of grief, in all it’s rawness and pain, even now, many years later. The emotional and psychological toll on Sarah is heartbreaking. It’s the story of a small town, the attitudes and prejudices and the characters who inhabit it. Sarah’s story should have us all thinking about how we view violence against women, and about the men who inflict such violence against women.
I admire Sarah’s honesty and courage in telling her story and I can't help but think how so very proud her mother would be of her.
* many thanks to the author, Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review
October 19, 2017
Told with spare prose and gut-wrenching honesty, even when this puts her and her family in a bad light, this memoir is hard to read, but well worth the effort. I can't even imagine how I would have felt if I was a witness to my mother's murder at age12. I admire her strength and her resolve.
April 4, 2017
Wow. This is a powerful book.
In 1994, Sarah Perry’s mother, Crystal, was murdered in their home while Sarah was only a room away. It was a brutality I can’t even fathom. 12-year-old Sarah was thrust into a world of fear, abandonment, and unspeakable grief.
More than a recounting of events, Sarah gives the reader the complete atmosphere of growing up in rural Maine, and the people of the small town of Bridgton that made up her world. She delves into the person her mother was, and what made her who she was. This memoir is an attempt to know her mother, from the perspective of a grown woman cognizant of her mother’s life choices, her anguish over on-again, off-again relationships, and her love for her daughter. This story is also Sarah’s journey to discover herself, as she was as a 12-year-old girl enduring unbelievable tragedy, and now as an adult understanding the whole picture of Crystal Perry as a person.
So many adults in Sarah’s life tried to help her cope with this horrible “thing that happened,” but many were misguided in their kindness, or too blind with grief to offer anything of value. The fear that still resides in Sarah is palpable. It’s easy, as a reader, to think “this is an event that happened, once, a long time ago,” but for Sarah, it’s every day of her life, and she brings that idea to the forefront. Her memoir is courageous, it’s honest, and never indulges in self-pity.
I appreciated Sarah’s candor. She acknowledges her faults, the mistakes all of us make as adolescents. She allows herself room to ask questions, to wonder about her mother’s motivations, the relationships she maintained with men and with her friends. She wonders about the fallacy of memory and about the unreliability of what you think you know about those close to you. The research is impeccable. Sarah refers to police transcripts, interviews, and personal remembrances, but this never reads like a sterile report; it’s like sitting with your best friend and listening to her tell you her story.
I dropped everything else I was reading when I started reading After the Eclipse. It was compelling and at the same time humbling. Sarah’s foray into her past took unbelievable courage, and this memoir is a testament to her strength. The kind of strength, I’m sure, she got from her mother.
Many thanks to Sarah Perry for the advance copy.
This review is also posted on my blog at flyleafunfurled.com.
In 1994, Sarah Perry’s mother, Crystal, was murdered in their home while Sarah was only a room away. It was a brutality I can’t even fathom. 12-year-old Sarah was thrust into a world of fear, abandonment, and unspeakable grief.
More than a recounting of events, Sarah gives the reader the complete atmosphere of growing up in rural Maine, and the people of the small town of Bridgton that made up her world. She delves into the person her mother was, and what made her who she was. This memoir is an attempt to know her mother, from the perspective of a grown woman cognizant of her mother’s life choices, her anguish over on-again, off-again relationships, and her love for her daughter. This story is also Sarah’s journey to discover herself, as she was as a 12-year-old girl enduring unbelievable tragedy, and now as an adult understanding the whole picture of Crystal Perry as a person.
So many adults in Sarah’s life tried to help her cope with this horrible “thing that happened,” but many were misguided in their kindness, or too blind with grief to offer anything of value. The fear that still resides in Sarah is palpable. It’s easy, as a reader, to think “this is an event that happened, once, a long time ago,” but for Sarah, it’s every day of her life, and she brings that idea to the forefront. Her memoir is courageous, it’s honest, and never indulges in self-pity.
I appreciated Sarah’s candor. She acknowledges her faults, the mistakes all of us make as adolescents. She allows herself room to ask questions, to wonder about her mother’s motivations, the relationships she maintained with men and with her friends. She wonders about the fallacy of memory and about the unreliability of what you think you know about those close to you. The research is impeccable. Sarah refers to police transcripts, interviews, and personal remembrances, but this never reads like a sterile report; it’s like sitting with your best friend and listening to her tell you her story.
I dropped everything else I was reading when I started reading After the Eclipse. It was compelling and at the same time humbling. Sarah’s foray into her past took unbelievable courage, and this memoir is a testament to her strength. The kind of strength, I’m sure, she got from her mother.
Many thanks to Sarah Perry for the advance copy.
This review is also posted on my blog at flyleafunfurled.com.
October 4, 2017
This memoir is a love letter to her Mother who was murdered. At times it is adjective, adverb, analogy overblown but it comes out of heartfelt agony for the dependence of their lives upon each other, within the horror of her Mother's end. Abrupt, audibly witnessed and brutal murder ripped her from Sarah's life at 12. Her Mother was then 30.
There are passages I could quote, so psychologically apt for "grief" periods. How family, kin, social welfare people, doctors- all of them. To what levels that they determine which or what "grief" is or should be or seems to be "grief" that is normal. That period of the first 2 years, as written here just after the murder, is one of the best lessons (voice) I've ever read for an answer to that "knowing norm" know better inquiries of the professionals and guardians. Both. What that is truly worth. Little to nothing. Because to the one within the beloved's void, all is different. Trust and safety are no longer viable states or quantity defined entities that exist. Not in any personal sense. Nor even in any human one.
It's a long book. There was a spot just after page 200, when I was too "over-Sarahed" to want to continue. But I plugged on. She's a literary expert in finding the word and the comparable everyday nuance to relate human warmth distance, pretend closeness, duplicity etc. She's brave-but most often too the words are the wall to hid within. MUCH of the time, calmness outside. For the first two or three years after the murder she is physically moved often between relatives, and the authorities made the first few months especially horrific. 64 "I don't know" replies per session. As an audible witness, this treatment for a 12 or 13 year old? She's bright and at times she hears and knows how suspected she herself is on top of it. Difficult to ominous for her own self-identity. So Sarah is a self-made non-whining hero. Rare, presently and in this case of further rejections, she is a credit to her Mother's love returned.
The case is eventually closed. When Sarah is long an adult.
The picture/photo on the cover is the only one- none inside. I wished there were a few more. But the hair, the thinness, the feisty spirit! Maybe the cover is enough. Crystal was Crystal. Quite definable and no slouch nor slacker in most anything you could name. She ate life. And it ate her.
This is a strong single Mom and daughter bonding tale first and foremost. It occurs and has acts quite apart from a cozy suburban or small town ideal or most modern dysfunction saga. It's not a book for everyone and requires great patience in delving into a plethora of strong and often selfish women. As such it has many beautiful passages it also holds much repetition and reaction explaining. All the Aunties and Grandma. Plus it's all the men in her Mother's life too through Sarah's eyes.
She loved her Mother. And she misses her every day. The criminals and perps never suffer what they wroth. Most think they do with prison and punishments, but they do not. Not even those who earn execution.
There are passages I could quote, so psychologically apt for "grief" periods. How family, kin, social welfare people, doctors- all of them. To what levels that they determine which or what "grief" is or should be or seems to be "grief" that is normal. That period of the first 2 years, as written here just after the murder, is one of the best lessons (voice) I've ever read for an answer to that "knowing norm" know better inquiries of the professionals and guardians. Both. What that is truly worth. Little to nothing. Because to the one within the beloved's void, all is different. Trust and safety are no longer viable states or quantity defined entities that exist. Not in any personal sense. Nor even in any human one.
It's a long book. There was a spot just after page 200, when I was too "over-Sarahed" to want to continue. But I plugged on. She's a literary expert in finding the word and the comparable everyday nuance to relate human warmth distance, pretend closeness, duplicity etc. She's brave-but most often too the words are the wall to hid within. MUCH of the time, calmness outside. For the first two or three years after the murder she is physically moved often between relatives, and the authorities made the first few months especially horrific. 64 "I don't know" replies per session. As an audible witness, this treatment for a 12 or 13 year old? She's bright and at times she hears and knows how suspected she herself is on top of it. Difficult to ominous for her own self-identity. So Sarah is a self-made non-whining hero. Rare, presently and in this case of further rejections, she is a credit to her Mother's love returned.
The case is eventually closed. When Sarah is long an adult.
The picture/photo on the cover is the only one- none inside. I wished there were a few more. But the hair, the thinness, the feisty spirit! Maybe the cover is enough. Crystal was Crystal. Quite definable and no slouch nor slacker in most anything you could name. She ate life. And it ate her.
This is a strong single Mom and daughter bonding tale first and foremost. It occurs and has acts quite apart from a cozy suburban or small town ideal or most modern dysfunction saga. It's not a book for everyone and requires great patience in delving into a plethora of strong and often selfish women. As such it has many beautiful passages it also holds much repetition and reaction explaining. All the Aunties and Grandma. Plus it's all the men in her Mother's life too through Sarah's eyes.
She loved her Mother. And she misses her every day. The criminals and perps never suffer what they wroth. Most think they do with prison and punishments, but they do not. Not even those who earn execution.
September 28, 2017
(I have a review copy.) I figured After the Eclipse was going to be heartbreaking, but I couldn't possibly have known it was going to be this good, this devastating, and this important. The whole world feels a little different. I'm stunned. It's (alarmingly) rare for someone to have something new to say. It's even rarer for a writer to be at the right time and place for that story to have a real impact. But this tender and insightful memoir has the chance to actually change the way we think about violence and class and the American soul. Weaker writers lash out occasionally when they can--to make a point, when they lose control of their material, when they want an easy way to appear strong and clever. This book never does that, not even once. Bitterness, hate, fear--despite the worst of human beings, somehow it doesn't prevail, not here. It's no small miracle that every page of this tragedy is awash in tenderness, that Perry maintains complete command over a series of impossibly slippery, chaotic, and horrifying events. But Perry. Is. A. Master.
After the Eclipse has made me simultaneously so sad for the world and yet so hopeful that the right books by the right people can actually make a difference in reshaping us into softer, more human forms. Evidence for this is that I am profoundly uninterested in ever reading another piece of crime fiction or true crime. Read this book and you will cry, you will never look at America the same way again, you will be angry, but in a deep, knowable way you will be better. My heart is bigger now. Big enough to say f*ck Truman Capote: down with exploitative true crime, and up with Sarah Perry.
After the Eclipse has made me simultaneously so sad for the world and yet so hopeful that the right books by the right people can actually make a difference in reshaping us into softer, more human forms. Evidence for this is that I am profoundly uninterested in ever reading another piece of crime fiction or true crime. Read this book and you will cry, you will never look at America the same way again, you will be angry, but in a deep, knowable way you will be better. My heart is bigger now. Big enough to say f*ck Truman Capote: down with exploitative true crime, and up with Sarah Perry.
March 15, 2018
Twelve-year-old Sarah Perry woke in the middle of the night to the sound of screaming. She sat, frozen in terror, for an indeterminate period of time. She ventured out of her bedroom to the darkened scene of this crime after the assailant had fled. Her mother was a shadow slumped ominously on the floor. The telephones were not working. Sarah slipped into the stillness of her rural Maine neighborhood to dart from house to house, looking for help. No door opened to her. She would eventually reach a restaurant; would eventually notify the police. What she did not know, and would not know for many years yet, was that the ambulance she'd sought so desperately to call had driven away without her mother in it. The authorities opted, instead, for the coroner's van.
I want to tell you about my mother.
Let me try again.
I am tired of this impulse to wound myself so that I can prove that I'll heal.
Such is the fundamental struggle of trauma.
It often seems that victims of trauma are obsessed with their experience. How else to explain the way they seem to think about it all the time; talk about it, suffer it; eat, sleep and breathe their damage every moment of every day? On the surface it looks like an obvious, and obviously unhealthy, fixation. Yet what so many mistake for an obsession with catastrophe is, in fact, the intrinsic human drive to construct a narrative.
We, each of us, have a story, and much of our identity is wrapped up in the memory of it. A traumatized person is missing elements of her story. The injury was so profound that the psyche was forced to repress certain aspects of it; to throw certain sections into cold storage - waiting, it is hoped, for a day safe enough to draw those dangerous elements forth and insert them into the script. A victim of trauma is not obsessing about the event as much as she's driving herself to find a way to remember it completely. Achieving that degree of recollection will allow her to own the experience and, through owning it, gain the ability to consign it to the past. The road is a healthy one...if you can manage to see it.
Decades passed before Sarah Perry felt safe enough to attempt a more comprehensive confrontation of her ordeal. She was a budding writer at twelve, right up until that awful night, but access to her art was lost in the shattering. Imagination, one can easily surmise, had become a frightening gift. Still, she worked hard to regain her creative footing. And she would choose to use it in the here-and-now, as she travelled back to Maine, as she travelled back in time, to uncover her own story.
This is an exceptional piece of work. The navigation is meticulous; the balances achieved between before and after, the legal violation and the psychological one, the shifting sands of an orphan's travail and the blind faith required to skim over them, like a shark, forever moving forward...all of it is masterfully done. She never forgets she has a reader, never loses sight of the knowledge we need to join in the journey. That's hard to manage in memoirs like this, and rare enough that I tend to grant great latitude for the hitch and the twitch and the swift retreat. No latitude required here. Sarah Perry will hold you, from start to finish, and in an astonishingly transparent way.
A tremendous feat.
I want to tell you about my mother.
Let me try again.
I am tired of this impulse to wound myself so that I can prove that I'll heal.
Such is the fundamental struggle of trauma.
It often seems that victims of trauma are obsessed with their experience. How else to explain the way they seem to think about it all the time; talk about it, suffer it; eat, sleep and breathe their damage every moment of every day? On the surface it looks like an obvious, and obviously unhealthy, fixation. Yet what so many mistake for an obsession with catastrophe is, in fact, the intrinsic human drive to construct a narrative.
We, each of us, have a story, and much of our identity is wrapped up in the memory of it. A traumatized person is missing elements of her story. The injury was so profound that the psyche was forced to repress certain aspects of it; to throw certain sections into cold storage - waiting, it is hoped, for a day safe enough to draw those dangerous elements forth and insert them into the script. A victim of trauma is not obsessing about the event as much as she's driving herself to find a way to remember it completely. Achieving that degree of recollection will allow her to own the experience and, through owning it, gain the ability to consign it to the past. The road is a healthy one...if you can manage to see it.
Decades passed before Sarah Perry felt safe enough to attempt a more comprehensive confrontation of her ordeal. She was a budding writer at twelve, right up until that awful night, but access to her art was lost in the shattering. Imagination, one can easily surmise, had become a frightening gift. Still, she worked hard to regain her creative footing. And she would choose to use it in the here-and-now, as she travelled back to Maine, as she travelled back in time, to uncover her own story.
This is an exceptional piece of work. The navigation is meticulous; the balances achieved between before and after, the legal violation and the psychological one, the shifting sands of an orphan's travail and the blind faith required to skim over them, like a shark, forever moving forward...all of it is masterfully done. She never forgets she has a reader, never loses sight of the knowledge we need to join in the journey. That's hard to manage in memoirs like this, and rare enough that I tend to grant great latitude for the hitch and the twitch and the swift retreat. No latitude required here. Sarah Perry will hold you, from start to finish, and in an astonishingly transparent way.
A tremendous feat.
February 8, 2019
Exemplary true crime memoir. Perry never loses sight of who she was as a child, and her account of her mother's murder unexpectedly
Animation by Guillaume Kurkdjian
allows us to root for that child-self throughout the book. Perry's mother, Crystal, killed violently at age 30, had been doing everything right: she'd divorced her unstable husband, bought her own small home, was holding down a steady job, and was raising a well-adjusted daughter, age twelve. Sarah Perry tells her mother's story eloquently, speaking for countless women who have been victims of violence when they were more than entitled to safety and security.
Animation by Guillaume Kurkdjian
October 12, 2017
This is a beautifully written book about loss and coming of age by Sarah Perry. It's relatable with the recent eclipse we had too in a way, as the tragedy in her life happened just 2 days after she experienced an eclipse. Almost like it was a bad omen, her mother Crystal was killed in a horrific murder in their home, just one room away from her daughter who was awakened and heard it happening and bravely managed to escape. Sarah shares what the years were like growing up without either parent, being bounced between her mom's family members and even some well-meaning friends briefly, as she struggled to keep a grip on her fear, sanity, and loneliness while she finished growing up. A very good read for most true crime lovers. An ARC was provided by NetGalley and the publisher for an unbiased review.
November 2, 2017
"Because of her, I used to try and save the tiny moles our cat chased in the yard. Because of her, I sing along to the radio, in my terrible voice, and I drive with the windows down, the air whipping across my arms. Because of her, I will always believe love is possible. Her name was Crystal. She cast light."
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This book is a raw, beautiful memorial to the woman that Crystal Perry was and an incredible feat of resiliency, courage and strength on the part of her daughter, Sarah, as she sought answers for the horrific crime that changed her life forever when she was just 12 years old. Sarah's story absolutely gutted me and this is without question, one of the saddest books I have read all year. She writes an extremely powerful examination of the cycle of domestic abuse, addiction and poverty while also giving a moving tribute to a woman who worked hard and loved hard, and who strived to make a better life for herself and her daughter. Sarah Perry, what an incredible gift you have for the written word and what an honor it was to meet your mother among the pages of this stunning book.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ heart wrenching stars.
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This book is a raw, beautiful memorial to the woman that Crystal Perry was and an incredible feat of resiliency, courage and strength on the part of her daughter, Sarah, as she sought answers for the horrific crime that changed her life forever when she was just 12 years old. Sarah's story absolutely gutted me and this is without question, one of the saddest books I have read all year. She writes an extremely powerful examination of the cycle of domestic abuse, addiction and poverty while also giving a moving tribute to a woman who worked hard and loved hard, and who strived to make a better life for herself and her daughter. Sarah Perry, what an incredible gift you have for the written word and what an honor it was to meet your mother among the pages of this stunning book.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ heart wrenching stars.
May 25, 2018
Wow, this book. It's heartbreaking without being sentimental, horrific without being gratuitous, sparsely written while still being completely absorbing. It's about the murder of Crystal Perry in 1994, while her daughter, Sarah Perry is hiding in her bedroom, aged 12. Perry draws a vivid portrait of her mother and her life, as well as the difficulties Perry herself faced after the murder, when being passed from one family member to another. This is definitely going to be one of my top books of the year. Highly recommended.
November 2, 2017
This was one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of them.
Sarah Perry was twelve when her single mother was murdered by an unknown monster in the room next to hers. She heard it all; she was powerless to stop it. After The Eclipse is her powerful story. It takes us through the years with her mom, the agonizing experience of her loss, and everything that follows. This was meticulously researched and the writing was out of this world. Just read it.
Sarah Perry was twelve when her single mother was murdered by an unknown monster in the room next to hers. She heard it all; she was powerless to stop it. After The Eclipse is her powerful story. It takes us through the years with her mom, the agonizing experience of her loss, and everything that follows. This was meticulously researched and the writing was out of this world. Just read it.
October 23, 2017
Gosh I really hate writing reviews for memoirs. I always feel like I’m passing judgment on the author themself rather than the actual book.
Anyway, this is an interesting memoir. It’s part true crime, part the story of an ordinary loved woman, and part a frustrating description of unloving dysfunctional family members (that reminded me a bit of Hillbilly Elegy). I loved that she wrote the story of her mother’s life, not just her murder. I think she was pretty honest and fair about herself and her mother’s struggles, and it was pretty heartbreaking to see the author describe what it was like to move forward with her life after her mother was brutally murdered in the next room.
So here’s the negative part...my rating of a book is always heavily connected to my experience with the book. Initially I rated it 4 stars. And then I went to bed and didn’t sleep all night because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s not an overly graphic book in terms of the murder (although there are some really difficult parts to read) but I could not stop thinking about being murdered while my kids were listening. It actually gave me mild nightmares when I actually did fall asleep. I still would highly recommend it but maybe not to sensitive readers and maybe not to read at night.
Anyway, this is an interesting memoir. It’s part true crime, part the story of an ordinary loved woman, and part a frustrating description of unloving dysfunctional family members (that reminded me a bit of Hillbilly Elegy). I loved that she wrote the story of her mother’s life, not just her murder. I think she was pretty honest and fair about herself and her mother’s struggles, and it was pretty heartbreaking to see the author describe what it was like to move forward with her life after her mother was brutally murdered in the next room.
So here’s the negative part...my rating of a book is always heavily connected to my experience with the book. Initially I rated it 4 stars. And then I went to bed and didn’t sleep all night because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s not an overly graphic book in terms of the murder (although there are some really difficult parts to read) but I could not stop thinking about being murdered while my kids were listening. It actually gave me mild nightmares when I actually did fall asleep. I still would highly recommend it but maybe not to sensitive readers and maybe not to read at night.
October 25, 2017
This book....So heartbreaking, so well written - it's unbelievable that this is a memoir. I hope Sarah keeps writing.
October 19, 2018
Sarah Perry was honored at the 2018 Triangle Awards, an event I worked in my graduate school job. The MFA-creative writing world is very small, and Perry graduated a few years back from Columbia's program, I was surprised I hadn't heard of her. She was quiet, with short hair and not very tall. She spoke eloquently and I was shocked by the story behind her memoir, "After the Eclipse."
When she was 12, Sarah's single mother, Crystal, was brutally murdered in their home. Sarah heard the whole thing, and it took more than a decade to bring her mother's killer to justice. But Perry wasn't just interested in chronicling the journey it took to find her mother's murderer. In fact, fans of true crime will likely be disappointed by Perry's book. This is a meditation; a meditation of a life lived in painful increments, of the leftover bits we can salvage when our existence is seemingly obliterated by brutality. And it's a daughter's attempt to understand and get to know the mother she never had a chance to know as an adult.
Perry introduces us to her mother Crystal and never lets us forget that this book is about her life, even more than it is about her death. Crystal was raised in an unloving home, but from that strife she grew to be vivacious and independent in many ways, known for her carefree attitude as much as her head of flaming red hair. This is a daughter who loves her mother, who has found ways to grapple with her mother's somewhat conflicted identity to celebrate the moments when the two of them flourished within each other. Crystal habitually chose abusive, substance addicted men to date, which wasn't easy on either of them. Living with several of these men proves dangerous and taxing to both of their emotional and physical health.
It's here that the book suffers a little bit. It was a little long, I think it could have been pared down a bit. But the place in which the writing seemed to suffer the most bias was in its study of Crystal's intimate relationships. Over and over Perry talks about how beautiful her mother was, how people remarked on her beauty, how it became a sort of talisman for her, a power that may have become a weakness. I'm sure Crystal Perry really was beautiful. But I was never convinced it was her beauty that led destructive men into her life. I wasn't sure if it was too painful an examination or something Perry didn't conclude herself about her mother, but to me it seemed obvious that these abusive men detected in Crystal the insecurities and weaknesses that would allow them to exploit her. She was a single woman from a painful childhood, who hadn't been treated well by men, who worked hard but still didn't make much money. Perry identifies that her mother struggled to be alone, that she was often physically immobilized by grief when one of her passionate affairs came to a grinding halt. These are all things I think men with bad intentions pick up on and use to their own advantage. It seemed a glaring omission when so much of the narrative is focused on each of these men and the life they created around their abuses, and especially how Crystal and Sarah suffered as a result.
But it's more important how Perry succeeds in this memoir, particularly that her mother is such a vibrant figure, and that I've never identified with mother-loss writing more than I did reading this book.
A year before my mother died of cancer, her health was declining in ways that only hindsight has illuminated. She'd been sick and high functioning for so long, that it was easy to miss what was likely right in front of us. I was getting in more and more trouble, and after she died people spoke of that time in my life dismissively, saying that my mother just wasn't able to pay that much attention to me. I blistered with anger any time family members said these things. Like Sarah and Crystal, it had been just Mom and me in those final years, struggling against illness and adversity together. How dare people who never knew our lives back then come in after the fact and criticize how she was parenting me?
It was only many years later that I was able to recognize that there was some truth to what they were saying. My mother hadn't lost the ability to parent me, but as her health declined she was certainly less observant. I had been using it to my advantage at the time, after all. It's still painful to admit this. Sure, my mom's worst was more than some other parent's best, but it is hard to admit that her parenting me--one of the most sacred things in my/our existence--wasn't being held to that sacred level. So in many ways, I understand Perry's personal explorations of things like her mother's parenting, sexual exploits and relationships with men. Maybe they could bear more scrutiny, but it's hard scrutiny to perform, and in the end, what does it matter? Perhaps readers can be the judge.
Most days I wake up and move about my life like everyone else. Because of what I've lost, sometimes I take a moment to step back and review my life and what I've accomplished. Sometimes life demands it of me, like at graduations or major milestones. I always wish my Mom was there with me, maybe imagine how proud she'd be. But a step behind those moments is the heavy, dark space where the absence lurks. I can remember those moments after my mom died, when at 14, the house I was born into was gone, my personal items in storage, thrown away, maybe I'd managed to grab some of them. All of the holiday decor, books I'd grown up with, toys, clothing, my mom's stuff--all of it. Gone. She was gone, our life was gone. I was moving through a world that I had never fully expected to inhabit, despite her illness. I remember moments where it felt like I was levitating with pain. Suspended in the air, in my life, in a moment, held in limbo by pain that cut into muscles, past my bones into some place deeper than my physical body. The loss of my mother touched everything, and it still does. Perry writes about those days, weeks and months after her mother is killed and though I lost my mother in very different circumstances, I felt that little girl she was writing about with an acuteness I had forgotten could exist.
I'm glad I got to know Crystal Perry, I'm glad that her daughter didn't give up writing after all. Writing is what brings the healing, not just in its action, but in its understanding. I'll still be broken, changing and growing, but the writing will always be there in some way. I think both of our mother's understood this.
When she was 12, Sarah's single mother, Crystal, was brutally murdered in their home. Sarah heard the whole thing, and it took more than a decade to bring her mother's killer to justice. But Perry wasn't just interested in chronicling the journey it took to find her mother's murderer. In fact, fans of true crime will likely be disappointed by Perry's book. This is a meditation; a meditation of a life lived in painful increments, of the leftover bits we can salvage when our existence is seemingly obliterated by brutality. And it's a daughter's attempt to understand and get to know the mother she never had a chance to know as an adult.
Perry introduces us to her mother Crystal and never lets us forget that this book is about her life, even more than it is about her death. Crystal was raised in an unloving home, but from that strife she grew to be vivacious and independent in many ways, known for her carefree attitude as much as her head of flaming red hair. This is a daughter who loves her mother, who has found ways to grapple with her mother's somewhat conflicted identity to celebrate the moments when the two of them flourished within each other. Crystal habitually chose abusive, substance addicted men to date, which wasn't easy on either of them. Living with several of these men proves dangerous and taxing to both of their emotional and physical health.
It's here that the book suffers a little bit. It was a little long, I think it could have been pared down a bit. But the place in which the writing seemed to suffer the most bias was in its study of Crystal's intimate relationships. Over and over Perry talks about how beautiful her mother was, how people remarked on her beauty, how it became a sort of talisman for her, a power that may have become a weakness. I'm sure Crystal Perry really was beautiful. But I was never convinced it was her beauty that led destructive men into her life. I wasn't sure if it was too painful an examination or something Perry didn't conclude herself about her mother, but to me it seemed obvious that these abusive men detected in Crystal the insecurities and weaknesses that would allow them to exploit her. She was a single woman from a painful childhood, who hadn't been treated well by men, who worked hard but still didn't make much money. Perry identifies that her mother struggled to be alone, that she was often physically immobilized by grief when one of her passionate affairs came to a grinding halt. These are all things I think men with bad intentions pick up on and use to their own advantage. It seemed a glaring omission when so much of the narrative is focused on each of these men and the life they created around their abuses, and especially how Crystal and Sarah suffered as a result.
But it's more important how Perry succeeds in this memoir, particularly that her mother is such a vibrant figure, and that I've never identified with mother-loss writing more than I did reading this book.
A year before my mother died of cancer, her health was declining in ways that only hindsight has illuminated. She'd been sick and high functioning for so long, that it was easy to miss what was likely right in front of us. I was getting in more and more trouble, and after she died people spoke of that time in my life dismissively, saying that my mother just wasn't able to pay that much attention to me. I blistered with anger any time family members said these things. Like Sarah and Crystal, it had been just Mom and me in those final years, struggling against illness and adversity together. How dare people who never knew our lives back then come in after the fact and criticize how she was parenting me?
It was only many years later that I was able to recognize that there was some truth to what they were saying. My mother hadn't lost the ability to parent me, but as her health declined she was certainly less observant. I had been using it to my advantage at the time, after all. It's still painful to admit this. Sure, my mom's worst was more than some other parent's best, but it is hard to admit that her parenting me--one of the most sacred things in my/our existence--wasn't being held to that sacred level. So in many ways, I understand Perry's personal explorations of things like her mother's parenting, sexual exploits and relationships with men. Maybe they could bear more scrutiny, but it's hard scrutiny to perform, and in the end, what does it matter? Perhaps readers can be the judge.
Most days I wake up and move about my life like everyone else. Because of what I've lost, sometimes I take a moment to step back and review my life and what I've accomplished. Sometimes life demands it of me, like at graduations or major milestones. I always wish my Mom was there with me, maybe imagine how proud she'd be. But a step behind those moments is the heavy, dark space where the absence lurks. I can remember those moments after my mom died, when at 14, the house I was born into was gone, my personal items in storage, thrown away, maybe I'd managed to grab some of them. All of the holiday decor, books I'd grown up with, toys, clothing, my mom's stuff--all of it. Gone. She was gone, our life was gone. I was moving through a world that I had never fully expected to inhabit, despite her illness. I remember moments where it felt like I was levitating with pain. Suspended in the air, in my life, in a moment, held in limbo by pain that cut into muscles, past my bones into some place deeper than my physical body. The loss of my mother touched everything, and it still does. Perry writes about those days, weeks and months after her mother is killed and though I lost my mother in very different circumstances, I felt that little girl she was writing about with an acuteness I had forgotten could exist.
I'm glad I got to know Crystal Perry, I'm glad that her daughter didn't give up writing after all. Writing is what brings the healing, not just in its action, but in its understanding. I'll still be broken, changing and growing, but the writing will always be there in some way. I think both of our mother's understood this.
October 8, 2017
4.5 Stars
A daughter's loving tribute to the mother she lost way too early. This is an extremely well-written yet heartbreaking memoir of the life and untimely death of Crystal Perry.
SYNOPSIS
Twelve year old Sarah Perry is awakened one night by the sound of her mother, Crystal's, screams as Crystal is being violently murdered.
After losing her mother, Sarah is passed from one family member to another until she leaves for college. All the while missing her sweet and beautiful mother every single day while fearing the killer will come for her. The story details Crystal's life and then follows Sarah through her childhood, the trial 12 years later and her decision to write this tribute to her mother.
WHAT I LOVED
Such a heartfelt story of a little girl losing the one person in her life who truly loved her. I can only hope my children love me half as much. Even as Sarah became older and realized that her mother was not perfect, she was able to accept the imperfections and still absolutely love and admire her mother.
Sarah Perry not only walked the reader through the crime, trial and evidence, she made the reader feel as though they really missed out on something by not having the opportunity to get to know Crystal. She seemed like the kind of person who could handle anything life threw her way and determined to make sure her daughter had a better life than she had. I loved how proud she was of her house and how hard she worked to make sure Sarah had a nice place to call home.
My heart broke for young Sarah each time she was disappointed by an adult who had pledged to take care of her. I kept wondering why the author was writing such a sad story for this little girl but then I would remember it was a true story and feel even worse.
I am super impressed that Sarah was able to write about this painful experience and accomplish her goal of honoring her mother's memory. Bravo! I hope it helped bring her some healing.
WHAT I DIDN'T LOVE
A couple parts in the trial section got a little too heavy into the forensic details but that was very mild and I had no other complaints.
OVERALL
Excellent book. Sarah and Crystal are both brave, strong women. So glad I took the time to read about them.
A daughter's loving tribute to the mother she lost way too early. This is an extremely well-written yet heartbreaking memoir of the life and untimely death of Crystal Perry.
SYNOPSIS
Twelve year old Sarah Perry is awakened one night by the sound of her mother, Crystal's, screams as Crystal is being violently murdered.
After losing her mother, Sarah is passed from one family member to another until she leaves for college. All the while missing her sweet and beautiful mother every single day while fearing the killer will come for her. The story details Crystal's life and then follows Sarah through her childhood, the trial 12 years later and her decision to write this tribute to her mother.
WHAT I LOVED
Such a heartfelt story of a little girl losing the one person in her life who truly loved her. I can only hope my children love me half as much. Even as Sarah became older and realized that her mother was not perfect, she was able to accept the imperfections and still absolutely love and admire her mother.
Sarah Perry not only walked the reader through the crime, trial and evidence, she made the reader feel as though they really missed out on something by not having the opportunity to get to know Crystal. She seemed like the kind of person who could handle anything life threw her way and determined to make sure her daughter had a better life than she had. I loved how proud she was of her house and how hard she worked to make sure Sarah had a nice place to call home.
My heart broke for young Sarah each time she was disappointed by an adult who had pledged to take care of her. I kept wondering why the author was writing such a sad story for this little girl but then I would remember it was a true story and feel even worse.
I am super impressed that Sarah was able to write about this painful experience and accomplish her goal of honoring her mother's memory. Bravo! I hope it helped bring her some healing.
WHAT I DIDN'T LOVE
A couple parts in the trial section got a little too heavy into the forensic details but that was very mild and I had no other complaints.
OVERALL
Excellent book. Sarah and Crystal are both brave, strong women. So glad I took the time to read about them.
October 23, 2017
This is a book that leaves me with a lot of complex feelings. The author, Sarah Perry, was only 12 when her mother Crystal was murdered in the next room of their house. This book is part memoir, part investigative journalism, as Sarah describes her mother as a person before the crime and her mother as a victim of a terrible crime.
It's a love letter to her mother, who was a beautiful and flawed woman — Perry never shrinks away from that. Her life after the murder was also difficult, with family bouncing her from house to house, never wanting to take on the full responsibility of keeping Sarah around. I still don't understand (and I don't think Perry does, either) why one of her aunts just pushed her away and foisted her on another sister. The people involved in the story (family, friends, co-workers, Sarah herself) feel very real, and we see many sides to them.
But Sarah touches on a very big point about this crime. She identifies abusiveness and toxic masculinity as a big element in why women are targeted and killed every day.
Some of the men surrounding Mom were ones she'd dated or otherwise encouraged; others she'd turned down, and still others she'd gently ignored, to spare their feelings. One of them decided that he had the right to take what he wanted. And he became very angry when she said no.
It's a beautifully written book about a terrible thing, and a daughter's love for her mother. It hurt to read parts of it, as I could feel Sarah's anguish and frustration and confusion, but it's also wonderful in a way, for her to be able to describe her mother to us. Worth the read.
It's a love letter to her mother, who was a beautiful and flawed woman — Perry never shrinks away from that. Her life after the murder was also difficult, with family bouncing her from house to house, never wanting to take on the full responsibility of keeping Sarah around. I still don't understand (and I don't think Perry does, either) why one of her aunts just pushed her away and foisted her on another sister. The people involved in the story (family, friends, co-workers, Sarah herself) feel very real, and we see many sides to them.
But Sarah touches on a very big point about this crime. She identifies abusiveness and toxic masculinity as a big element in why women are targeted and killed every day.
Some of the men surrounding Mom were ones she'd dated or otherwise encouraged; others she'd turned down, and still others she'd gently ignored, to spare their feelings. One of them decided that he had the right to take what he wanted. And he became very angry when she said no.
It's a beautifully written book about a terrible thing, and a daughter's love for her mother. It hurt to read parts of it, as I could feel Sarah's anguish and frustration and confusion, but it's also wonderful in a way, for her to be able to describe her mother to us. Worth the read.
October 20, 2017
This book was incredibly honest and heartbreaking.
This tells the story of the murder of Crystal Perry in 1994. Her daughter, Sarah, was in the next room listening. The story is tragic. Sarah goes to explain the history of her family, much of it contains abuse and hard times.
Sarah explains what happened to her after the murder of her mother; how she was moved from family to family at the age of 12. Many of her family members did not understand how to allow her to properly grieve, and did not know how to care for her. Sarah was very honest about her feelings and did not hide the realities of the situations. Many of her feelings were very personal and frank. I appreciated the honesty in her writing and found this part heart-wrenching, but also beautiful in its truth.
As for Crystal, her death was tragic, brutal, and horrible. Sarah describes her as someone who is very flawed. She is also described as someone dealing with her own demons, and incredibly loved by her daughter. She was.... human.
This is recommended to people who are prepared to read a difficult story, but a meaningful one too.
This tells the story of the murder of Crystal Perry in 1994. Her daughter, Sarah, was in the next room listening. The story is tragic. Sarah goes to explain the history of her family, much of it contains abuse and hard times.
Sarah explains what happened to her after the murder of her mother; how she was moved from family to family at the age of 12. Many of her family members did not understand how to allow her to properly grieve, and did not know how to care for her. Sarah was very honest about her feelings and did not hide the realities of the situations. Many of her feelings were very personal and frank. I appreciated the honesty in her writing and found this part heart-wrenching, but also beautiful in its truth.
As for Crystal, her death was tragic, brutal, and horrible. Sarah describes her as someone who is very flawed. She is also described as someone dealing with her own demons, and incredibly loved by her daughter. She was.... human.
This is recommended to people who are prepared to read a difficult story, but a meaningful one too.
April 11, 2020
Terribly beautiful, thoughtful and rich
November 28, 2017
This.
Book.
This book completely sucker punched me in the feels and I'm still a wreck thinking about this book.
I requested it because it sounded interesting and when I was younger, like grade school young, I would read true crime books like they were candy.
I have no idea why my younger self was into that sort of thing and it kind of disturbs me now. And this book is why.
The author's mother was murdered when the author was a girl of 12 years old. She was there and HEARD it happen and saw the immediate aftermath. It was brutal and gruesome. No one was really able to be there for her to deal with it all. Her family were either absent or absolutely horrible to her. The police and some of her family members were CONVINCED she knew who killed her mother and wasn't saying who it was to protect him. They pestered her about it, over and over again, until finally they did regression therapy and it showed she didn't know. The poor girl! She lost her beloved mother and SHE is treated as an accomplice, if not the actual murderer! Also, she had to bang on the door of FOUR houses before someone would open the door to her and let her use their phone after the murder happened.
This was a SMALL town, she was KNOWN to these people. She was screaming, crying for help and COVERED in blood, and NO ONE was willing to help her?!? I seriously hate people sometimes.
So anyway, long story short, what has made me change my stance on true crime and murder mystery books and shows, is this. The author has to live every day with the idea of murder being glorified almost in our modern media. Those shows and books don't really show what the survivors have to go through, day in, day out. There are real people behind the headlines and the fiction that's ripped from the headlines.
Having that brought to my attention has changed the way I feel about murder mystery books now. Granted, they have been falling out of my favor recently, because I really don't like reading about people being brutalized and tortured before being killed, but this is the final nail in the coffin I think.
If you enjoy murder mystery shows and books, do NOT read this book. It might very well ruin them for you. At the very least, it will make you think.
The book isn't all about the murder and the aftermath, the chapters alternate with a biography about the mother and their time together. She was a single mother and they were a very close mother-daughter pair. It is even more heartbreaking when you see the sacrifices the mother made for both of them. They truly loved one another. So sad.
Also, this book takes on the whole "men take what they want from women and society allows them to think that it is their right" which has been coming up more and more recently. It can be a bit in the reader's face at times, but it is a very important topic. Men and women need to call BS on the whole "rape culture" that the world has going on. Women have come a long way, but boy, do we still have a long way to go!
Topical, important, if depressing, read. 5 stars. Written well, with heart. Highly recommended.
My thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.
Book.
This book completely sucker punched me in the feels and I'm still a wreck thinking about this book.
I requested it because it sounded interesting and when I was younger, like grade school young, I would read true crime books like they were candy.
I have no idea why my younger self was into that sort of thing and it kind of disturbs me now. And this book is why.
The author's mother was murdered when the author was a girl of 12 years old. She was there and HEARD it happen and saw the immediate aftermath. It was brutal and gruesome. No one was really able to be there for her to deal with it all. Her family were either absent or absolutely horrible to her. The police and some of her family members were CONVINCED she knew who killed her mother and wasn't saying who it was to protect him. They pestered her about it, over and over again, until finally they did regression therapy and it showed she didn't know. The poor girl! She lost her beloved mother and SHE is treated as an accomplice, if not the actual murderer! Also, she had to bang on the door of FOUR houses before someone would open the door to her and let her use their phone after the murder happened.
This was a SMALL town, she was KNOWN to these people. She was screaming, crying for help and COVERED in blood, and NO ONE was willing to help her?!? I seriously hate people sometimes.
So anyway, long story short, what has made me change my stance on true crime and murder mystery books and shows, is this. The author has to live every day with the idea of murder being glorified almost in our modern media. Those shows and books don't really show what the survivors have to go through, day in, day out. There are real people behind the headlines and the fiction that's ripped from the headlines.
Having that brought to my attention has changed the way I feel about murder mystery books now. Granted, they have been falling out of my favor recently, because I really don't like reading about people being brutalized and tortured before being killed, but this is the final nail in the coffin I think.
If you enjoy murder mystery shows and books, do NOT read this book. It might very well ruin them for you. At the very least, it will make you think.
The book isn't all about the murder and the aftermath, the chapters alternate with a biography about the mother and their time together. She was a single mother and they were a very close mother-daughter pair. It is even more heartbreaking when you see the sacrifices the mother made for both of them. They truly loved one another. So sad.
Also, this book takes on the whole "men take what they want from women and society allows them to think that it is their right" which has been coming up more and more recently. It can be a bit in the reader's face at times, but it is a very important topic. Men and women need to call BS on the whole "rape culture" that the world has going on. Women have come a long way, but boy, do we still have a long way to go!
Topical, important, if depressing, read. 5 stars. Written well, with heart. Highly recommended.
My thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.
May 1, 2017
I received a free copy of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Beautifully candid and courageous this was a very emotional read. At 12 years old Sarah is plunged into a living nightmare when her mother is murdered and it is 12 long years before the killer is finally caught. My heart hurt for this poor child to lose her mother and to have a family who couldn't look past their own pain enough to care for her the way they should have in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy. Sarah Perry has written a wonderful tribute to her mother's life.
January 2, 2018
Excellent true story about a 12 year old girl whose mother is murdered while the daughter was in the next room sleeping. The story chronicles the relationship between the girl and the mother and then search to catch the mother's killer. A sad story that shows how the human spirit continues to persevere even during the worst of tragedies. Perry learns much about her mother through this experience, but even more about herself and the family and friends around her.
I highly recommend this book.
I highly recommend this book.
October 11, 2017
So so so so so so great.
October 13, 2017
Truly powerful. Sarah Perry’s story is heartbreaking and inspiring. Her mother would be very proud.
June 20, 2018
I have just finished Part 1 of this book and while I do intend to finish it, I want to write at least a partial review of this while fresh in my mind.
Simply put, while Perry is indeed a talented writer, I am convinced writing this memoir of such a personal odyssey should have strictly remained a part of her own personal therapy and not a book to be consumed by the masses.
It's simply too unreliable a narrative to have value.
I have zero doubt that what Perry writes is how she remembers it...but have serious reservations that it is indeed how things actually were.
Most damning to me...her recollection that America saw OJ as a hero and were unsympathetic to Nicole and her situation. Final straw...her memory that EVERYONE in her classroom cheered when OJ was acquitted...in white Texas at a school attended by military kids?!?! Frankly that is impossible to believe.
Her anger towards police who spent decades trying to solve her mother's case seems oddly misplaced and frankly unjustified.
Herr anger and resentment at people who while not professionally trained enuff to know how to deal with a child suffering from probable PTSD but still tried to give comfort, support, and a home..but the willingness to excuse those who loved her but weren't even willing to try seems immature.
Her willingness to excuse POS boyfriends who were abusers, drug dealers, convicts but not family members who due to whatever inadequacies didn't behave how she at 12 thought they should seems irrational and hampered by an unwillingness to stray from her memories of her mother's opinions of these people.
Her inability to see her mother, herself and their living situation for what it truly was rather than what rose colored glasses have left her remembering lacks the true perspectives needed to make a book like this work for outsiders.
All these...and if truthful...many more examples make for a distorted, semi-worthless read for me and what I was hoping to get out of the story.
I'm not trying to be cold-hearted, if Perry's history was my history...I have doubts I would do any better telling the narrative of my mother's violent murder and the chaotic tragedy of my life that followed.
I have no complaints of what she has WRITTEN as a tribute to the person she clearly adored. My complaints are more with the editors, agents and publishing company that thought taking a woman's therapeutic "diaries" and presenting them as a must read, 100% accurate final say rendition of this heartbreaking story was a good idea.
As a sidenote...I often feel this way about memoirs...rarely do I feel they do a good enuff job presenting a clear, impartial story...so perhaps it is my job as a reader to recognize my own bias against this style of writing and avoid it in favor of more methodical journalistic non-fiction instead. Something I will seriously consider in choosing future readings.
Update: finishing the last bit strengthened by 2 star review. Using the Duke Lacrosse rape case as proof of misogyny and rape culture...SERIOUSLY?!?!?
Then after expounding for paragraphs on this thesis, in a casual aside,...they weren't prosecuted...BUT (I'm still right).
Just even leaving it as...they weren't prosecuted...as if they got away with something.
In truth, they were announced, in an extremely rare declaration from the bench, as COMPLETELY INNOCENT, the district attorney was disbarred and eventually jailed for criminal prosecution.
But by using the completely FALSE , criminally corrupt, media malpracticed, Duke case as proof of your narrative washed away all integrity the book may have still had.
And made me take away even another star.
Shameful.
Simply put, while Perry is indeed a talented writer, I am convinced writing this memoir of such a personal odyssey should have strictly remained a part of her own personal therapy and not a book to be consumed by the masses.
It's simply too unreliable a narrative to have value.
I have zero doubt that what Perry writes is how she remembers it...but have serious reservations that it is indeed how things actually were.
Most damning to me...her recollection that America saw OJ as a hero and were unsympathetic to Nicole and her situation. Final straw...her memory that EVERYONE in her classroom cheered when OJ was acquitted...in white Texas at a school attended by military kids?!?! Frankly that is impossible to believe.
Her anger towards police who spent decades trying to solve her mother's case seems oddly misplaced and frankly unjustified.
Herr anger and resentment at people who while not professionally trained enuff to know how to deal with a child suffering from probable PTSD but still tried to give comfort, support, and a home..but the willingness to excuse those who loved her but weren't even willing to try seems immature.
Her willingness to excuse POS boyfriends who were abusers, drug dealers, convicts but not family members who due to whatever inadequacies didn't behave how she at 12 thought they should seems irrational and hampered by an unwillingness to stray from her memories of her mother's opinions of these people.
Her inability to see her mother, herself and their living situation for what it truly was rather than what rose colored glasses have left her remembering lacks the true perspectives needed to make a book like this work for outsiders.
All these...and if truthful...many more examples make for a distorted, semi-worthless read for me and what I was hoping to get out of the story.
I'm not trying to be cold-hearted, if Perry's history was my history...I have doubts I would do any better telling the narrative of my mother's violent murder and the chaotic tragedy of my life that followed.
I have no complaints of what she has WRITTEN as a tribute to the person she clearly adored. My complaints are more with the editors, agents and publishing company that thought taking a woman's therapeutic "diaries" and presenting them as a must read, 100% accurate final say rendition of this heartbreaking story was a good idea.
As a sidenote...I often feel this way about memoirs...rarely do I feel they do a good enuff job presenting a clear, impartial story...so perhaps it is my job as a reader to recognize my own bias against this style of writing and avoid it in favor of more methodical journalistic non-fiction instead. Something I will seriously consider in choosing future readings.
Update: finishing the last bit strengthened by 2 star review. Using the Duke Lacrosse rape case as proof of misogyny and rape culture...SERIOUSLY?!?!?
Then after expounding for paragraphs on this thesis, in a casual aside,...they weren't prosecuted...BUT (I'm still right).
Just even leaving it as...they weren't prosecuted...as if they got away with something.
In truth, they were announced, in an extremely rare declaration from the bench, as COMPLETELY INNOCENT, the district attorney was disbarred and eventually jailed for criminal prosecution.
But by using the completely FALSE , criminally corrupt, media malpracticed, Duke case as proof of your narrative washed away all integrity the book may have still had.
And made me take away even another star.
Shameful.
March 4, 2018
I will admit that at times I felt I was reading a slow-moving thriller while reading this book. And then I would realize my mistake and feel absolutely horrible, because this is not some gaudy crime novel, but Sarah Perry’s actual life. She can’t make up events to move the story along - she has organized her life into a memoir. This is first and foremost a love letter to her mother. Sarah delves into her mother’s childhood, her love life, her friendships, her struggles, all while framing the brutal event that ended her mother’s life at only 30 years old. She also depicts her experiences after overhearing such a terrifying event. I know this book was the product of an incredible amount of research, interviewing, and drawing upon personal strength, and I can’t begin to understand what Sarah Perry went through. But it was a difficult read for me. I don’t think that should detract from what she’s made of such a sickening event.
September 26, 2017
An extremely compelling book of memoir and crime writing. Sarah Perry confronts a lot in this book - institutionalized sexism and misogyny, family violence, domestic abuse, gender roles, trauma - and has created a complete work that brings her mother’s life and her own life into parallel and contrasting narratives. At the same time, there is no sensationalism. Although the catalyst for the work was the trial of her mother’s murderer, Perry uses the information she has gathered to better understand the parent she was denied the opportunity of knowing in life.
August 18, 2019
It doesn’t escape my notice that I happened to finish this book on the anniversary of my mother’s death. A mother I barely remember and, now that all the people who were willing to talk about her in terms other than sainthood are gone, someone I can only ever know from photos and a brief holiday diary and some letters. It’s not enough but the only thing that would be enough was to have her still her, to have the luxury of taking her self, who she would be, for granted. But nothing would ever be enough. Everything is crumbling fragments, fragile and fading.
Sarah Perry captures that sense of distance and debarment from a life that meant everything to yours so well. And she writes in the shadow of a terrible crime. This is a very good book.
Sarah Perry captures that sense of distance and debarment from a life that meant everything to yours so well. And she writes in the shadow of a terrible crime. This is a very good book.
October 1, 2017
In After The Eclipse, Sarah Perry does a phenomenal job telling the story of her mother Crystal’s life and death, as well as the story of her own life before and after her mother was raped and murdered. The way she weaves the past and present together, as well as provides both facts and insightful observations, is truly outstanding. The fact the story takes place in a small town in Maine was interesting, too, since stories like Ms. Perry’s usually seem to come from down South, instead of up North.
While the memoir would fit the true crime category, it’s much more than a crime story. It’s a memoir about what it’s like to be a 12-year-old who hears her mother being murdered, but is too terrified to go help her; who ends up being accused of things, including by the police, that weren’t true; and who finds herself being basically unwanted by anyone else in her large extended family.
The author’s portrait of her extended family is far from flattering, too. One wonders how they will feel about this book. In addition, the author’s portrait of men is extremely negative. The majority of men in this memoir have something wrong with them. At least, though, Sarah Perry is very honest at one point about how her childhood affected her views on men. That’s not always the case in contemporary memoirs. Many memoirs have been published by those who seem convinced their childhood experiences, regardless of how terrible or strange, have absolutely nothing to do with how they view the opposite sex as adults. Ms. Perry obviously knows her childhood experiences deeply affected her life as an adult, including how she feels about men.
Violence against women is a theme repeatedly tackled by the author. She clearly shows how children who grow up in violent homes often accept that physical or verbal violence is normal; and sometimes grow up to be violent themselves, or victims of repeated acts of violence. When Sarah Perry is questioned as a child about the possibility her mother’s fiancé was the killer, she said he wasn’t a violent man, even though he did extreme damage to her mother’s home when he was angry. She even laughed about the damage he did, and said his relationship with her mother was a “normal” adult relationship. Plus, as a child, Ms. Perry appeared to see it as normal that she knew so much about her mother's sex life; even commenting on it in her diary, as if she was just commenting about the weather or something.
Along with physical violence, verbal violence is also rampant in the story, both by men and women. Moreover, a notch below that are all the nasty thoughts and feelings expressed by others about the murder; including the ideas that Crystal Perry was responsible for her own death, due to her behavior; or that Sarah Perry may have been trying to protect the killer, because she liked him; or that she was possibly even involved in a plot to kill her own mother.
Bad things can lead to good things, however, and this memoir is about as good as memoir writing gets. The only time the author seemed to be going a bit off the rail was towards the end of the book, when she speculated her mother might have had a physical relationship with her best female friend. This was just a hunch that the author had, but there was no proof of such a thing, and only brought up an incident that would be viewed negatively by most readers or followers of the crime. Why did Ms. Perry include that incident and start speculating in that direction? Was she hoping if her mother was alive today she would not disapprove of her daughter’s lifestyle? Was she thinking if her mother had liked women, instead of men, she would have had a much happier personal life, and would not have been killed? (Unfortunately, dead people have no privacy rights, particularly those individuals who were murdered.)
Regardless if her mother liked or hated men, she appeared to believe she could not or should not ever be without one; something she erroneously internalized as a child. Her vision of a fulfilling adult life was still obviously obscured by her childhood. Sadly for both mother and daughter, Crystal Perry was murdered before she could fully clear her vision of those childhood obstructions.
(Note: I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)
While the memoir would fit the true crime category, it’s much more than a crime story. It’s a memoir about what it’s like to be a 12-year-old who hears her mother being murdered, but is too terrified to go help her; who ends up being accused of things, including by the police, that weren’t true; and who finds herself being basically unwanted by anyone else in her large extended family.
The author’s portrait of her extended family is far from flattering, too. One wonders how they will feel about this book. In addition, the author’s portrait of men is extremely negative. The majority of men in this memoir have something wrong with them. At least, though, Sarah Perry is very honest at one point about how her childhood affected her views on men. That’s not always the case in contemporary memoirs. Many memoirs have been published by those who seem convinced their childhood experiences, regardless of how terrible or strange, have absolutely nothing to do with how they view the opposite sex as adults. Ms. Perry obviously knows her childhood experiences deeply affected her life as an adult, including how she feels about men.
Violence against women is a theme repeatedly tackled by the author. She clearly shows how children who grow up in violent homes often accept that physical or verbal violence is normal; and sometimes grow up to be violent themselves, or victims of repeated acts of violence. When Sarah Perry is questioned as a child about the possibility her mother’s fiancé was the killer, she said he wasn’t a violent man, even though he did extreme damage to her mother’s home when he was angry. She even laughed about the damage he did, and said his relationship with her mother was a “normal” adult relationship. Plus, as a child, Ms. Perry appeared to see it as normal that she knew so much about her mother's sex life; even commenting on it in her diary, as if she was just commenting about the weather or something.
Along with physical violence, verbal violence is also rampant in the story, both by men and women. Moreover, a notch below that are all the nasty thoughts and feelings expressed by others about the murder; including the ideas that Crystal Perry was responsible for her own death, due to her behavior; or that Sarah Perry may have been trying to protect the killer, because she liked him; or that she was possibly even involved in a plot to kill her own mother.
Bad things can lead to good things, however, and this memoir is about as good as memoir writing gets. The only time the author seemed to be going a bit off the rail was towards the end of the book, when she speculated her mother might have had a physical relationship with her best female friend. This was just a hunch that the author had, but there was no proof of such a thing, and only brought up an incident that would be viewed negatively by most readers or followers of the crime. Why did Ms. Perry include that incident and start speculating in that direction? Was she hoping if her mother was alive today she would not disapprove of her daughter’s lifestyle? Was she thinking if her mother had liked women, instead of men, she would have had a much happier personal life, and would not have been killed? (Unfortunately, dead people have no privacy rights, particularly those individuals who were murdered.)
Regardless if her mother liked or hated men, she appeared to believe she could not or should not ever be without one; something she erroneously internalized as a child. Her vision of a fulfilling adult life was still obviously obscured by her childhood. Sadly for both mother and daughter, Crystal Perry was murdered before she could fully clear her vision of those childhood obstructions.
(Note: I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)
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