The Long Journey Home: A Memoir by Margaret Robison

When I found out that TLC Book Tours was offering its bloggers the opportunity to review The Long Journey Home: A Memoir by Margaret Robison, I was torn. I wanted to read her story, not only because I normally adore all southern writers as a rule, but because I was hoping that Ms. Robison would offer an explanation, or even admit just a little bit that she allowed her famous sons to grow up in a deeply disturbing and traumatic environment, forever damaging them. I desperately wanted to hear “I’m sorry” from her, as my own mentally ill mother recently admitted her own remorse for the abuse she inflicted upon my deeply disturbed brother (but not me, of course), and even admitted that she allowed him to guilt her and take all of her inheritance, leaving her unemployed and with $30 to her name. I knew if I reviewed Robinson’s book, I knew I’d give it a fair review, as I’m not one of those bloggers who write “I loved it” about every book they review. However, I didn’t get my “I’m sorry” from Robison, and now I’m even more mad about my own mother, and how mental illness cruelly affects us all, in one way or another.

Margaret Robison is the mother of Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison, and this is her first memoir about her life and her children. I was frustrated when I opened my ARC and saw the publisher’s note, which stated in the second sentence that she was the mother of Augusten and John. This put me on alert that they were trying to capitalize on her famous sons, rather than focus on her own personal story of pain and mental illness. When they wrote that the book “is a story that will change your understanding of her now-infamous family,” I worried about what I was going to read in this book. It started off with a brief Dr. Turcotte memory in 1980, where she can’t remember what day it is, but she tells another psychiatrist she wouldn’t recommend her current psychiatrist (Dr. Turcotte) to the devil. The book suddenly goes back to 1935, and Robison writes about her Southern Baptist Georgian childhood–and as I suspected, her family had their own mental illness and complicated, dysfunctional problems that contributed to the state of her own mental health. After a few chapters, the story flashes forward and talks about her first son, John Elder, and how he had said his first word (car) at 8 months old.

It was heartbreaking to hear about John Elder’s childhood, and how none of the doctors knew what was wrong with him. As a stepmother to a child with Asperger Syndrome, I can only imagine what it would have been like for her. She writes about her husband’s frustration over John’s constant crying, and then she suddenly moves onto meeting Dr. Turcotte, who she originally sought help from when she and her husband were having marital problems, as John had a tendency for violence and had been abusing Robison for years. This frightened me, as I remembered Augusten’s A Wolf at the Table, and knew that his father probably had hunted him with his rifle when Augusten was just a tiny, tiny boy.

The fact that Margaret tells the story when Chris (Augusten) tells her his father told him he was going to kill him, and Chris was forced to jump from his father’s speeding car. Not only was I frightened because I’ve met Augusten once, but because I had seen that same sort of crazy in my own stepfather’s and mother’s eyes. When you grow up in an unstable home where your parents beat and torture you, you have this particular look in your eye. I can’t explain it, but trust me when I tell you crazy knows crazy, and the look in Augusten’s eye when I met him told me everything he wrote in his books had happened to him. I was overjoyed that this small story made it into Robison’s memoir, because I was starting to get very worried, as she had barely mentioned Chris in the first 225 pages.

Learning about Robison’s mother’s and brother’s mental problems was extremely bothersome, because I realized Robison had less of a support system to lean back on while suffering her own multiple mental breakdowns. It was interesting to learn her father was so disturbed by a self-portrait she did of herself that he made her throw it away. I was horrified to learn her mother gave birth to another daughter with Cerebral Palsey, who suffered greatly in her short life. While I can still feel some compassion for Robison, as I feel for my own mother, I still can’t help feeling frustrated that Robison wrote about so many things that happened to her so clearly, and admitted to not knowing as many things in her life, all the while denying things that both her children wrote about in the last few chapters of her book. She suffers from an unnamed mental illness, and has suffered from a stroke, and I wasn’t surprised that she has so much memory loss. Robison couldn’t even remember whether or not Dr. Turcotte raped her, but it was odd to me that she was adamant about certain things both of her sons wrote about her. This book really frustrated me, and I honestly feel her pride got in the way of her honesty, and it would have simply been easier and less painful for her sons if she had written that she didn’t remember things the way they did. She cut Augusten down, and managed to praise John Elder at the same time while tell her readers they were both wrong and she was right. I’m absolutely furious by this, because she is denying her own responsibility in their upbringing by doing this. Sure, she is crazy, and even admits she was psychotic at certain times throughout the book, but that still doesn’t give anyone a free pass at screwing up their children. I felt Robison wrote about her amazing ability to teach children poetry at the Donahue School just so she could prove she was caring and kind to children on some level. If she was so good at it, why did she leave, or why didn’t she write more about her time there and why it was cut so short?

I know on a personal level that living through multiple trauma’s can mess with your memory, because I have blocked out so many memories during my own childhood and adolescence. Like Robison, I have relied on my journals and my friends to help fill in the holes in my memory. If it wasn’t for my best friend who witnessed things so disturbing I would have thought them to be false memories, or perhaps nightmares, but I’d never deny my own mother her memories of what she experienced. Then again, my own mother was a pathological liar, and there is no use ever trying to argue with her. As always, I saw nothing to her. As a survivor of a mentally ill mother, stepfather and half-brother, this book pains me so much. It is sad to see the cycle of mental illness and how it affects children, and how those grown children are forced to have their mother publically deny them their own memories. I was literally throwing my book and yelling when I finished reading this book, not because she denies her own children’s stories, but because I was now forced to give a book that I hate any press.

If you are looking for tons of stories about Augusten and John or their childhood, don’t buy this book. This book is about Margaret Robison, and her fading, (sometimes) rambling memories, until the last few chapters, where she goes down a list, defending herself and her ex-husband John against every little thing her sons have written or spoken about her. No one cares if John Robison abused the family pets, because he threatened to kill his youngest son while speeding in a car on the way to kill him and the boy had to jump for his life and the two of you spent hours hiding from him. If she couldn’t even remember her own visits to various mental hospitals, can we really take her word that John Elder got it wrong about who drove her to one of them once? I think not. It is clear that these last chapters were either coached out of her for sensational value, or were just her final act of revenge towards Augusten, who she repeatedly bashes. Robison, trust me, you just made yourself look worse by denying so much, including the fact that you are bisexual. Who writes a memoir and refuses to write about the experiences of your sexual experiences with women? Robison, I guess, since she wrote of her own romantic encounters as if they were tales of friendship. I realize she is an older woman of a different generation, but still. I already feel bad enough writing this review, but as an honest blogger, I feel I must write all my feelings about this book.

I must leave you all with this–Augusten and John’s memories are their memories, and they are the only memories that matter, as I see this book as an attempt to save face on Robison’s part, rather than her opportunity to tell her story. John Elder has shed so much light on Asperger Syndrome, and he give us all hope by undergoing adult cognitive behavior therapy. Augusten wrote the first memoir (that I read) where someone had a worse childhood than I did. His work reinforces that we survivors of dysfunctional childhood can laugh at our pasts while telling the painful truth.

To find out more about Margaret Robison, visit her website.

Margaret Robison’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Wednesday, June 1st:  Well Read Wife

Thursday, June 2nd: The Girl from the Ghetto

Monday, June 6th:  Books Like Breathing

Tuesday, June 7th:  Life in Review

Thursday, June 9th:  Silver and Grace

Monday, June 13th:  Reviews by Lola

Monday, June 20th:  Sara’s Organized Chaos

Friday, June 24th:  Chaotic Compendiums

Monday, June 27th:  The Book Lady’s Blog – guest post

Thursday, June 30th:  Rundpinne

Thursday, July 7th:  SMS Book Reviews

Friday, July 8th:  Colloquium

Friday, July 15th:  Thoughts of Joy