BOOK REVIEW for After the Wedding by Eileen Gibb

 

TITLE:            After the Wedding

AUTHOR:      Eileen Gibb

GENRE:          Memoir

RATING:        4 stars

This book brought out so many feelings for me.

First off, I want to say that this man was a despicable barely human. Unfortunately, during that time period, "man" was still considered so much  higher than women and this comes through clearly in the book.  I kept having to remind myself that the generations were different then,  not to say that family violence does not exist today though.

Eileen, as a young working woman,  applied Christianity to EVERYTHING  - to the point where it felt almost "holier than thou".  I think the price she put on Christianity was a big reason she met John and ended up where she landed. 

In fact,  when she first met John, her comments made it obvious she did not particularly like him as he was not Christian enough (if only she had kept to that), instead she kept forcing religion on him and this would be a theme that would repeat often between the two.   

Yet, why on earth would you date him and marry him and then basically proceed, for the entire book, to NEVER open your mouth - not for voicing an opinion, not for saying "no I don't want to marry you", not even for telling someone else about the violence in your home? It was so frustrating to read.

Throughout the entire book, she never defends herself and everyone around her dominates her, in fact, at one point towards the end of the book she actually says something like "i never seem to speak up for myself" REALLY!!??

The role of Christianity played a huge part in this story and it was painfully obvious that church and praying was something to pull out only when needed.  For example Eileen trots out religion but when her husband John does something like stealing, she conveniently puts her beliefs on a shelf.  When her daughter's friend says that John molested her, Eileen does nothing about it - does not confront him and does not even ask the child to tell her what happened (if anything, but why would this child say something like that if it were not true).  

One of my pet peeves are couples that have horrible marriages, yet, continue to make babies.  Why, oh why did they have 3 kids? - these poor kids were suffering from PTSD and by the way, if John molested this little girl, don't you think he could have done the same to his own daughter?  In fact, their daughter speaks up as an adult and STILL nobody listened, certainly Eileen did not want to hear it, better to pretend its not there.  The same way she accepted the cycle of being hit by John, who in turn , would then apologize and do it all over again and again.

I won't even bother talking about that horrid John - he got the ending he deserved.  

The writing was very encompassing and Eileen did not shy away from writing about all of it - that is a brave thing to do.  Her story brought out so many feelings for me and that is the sign of a good story, in my opinion.

I hope Eileen and her children have gotten the peace they were looking for.