Three shirts, extra pants, undies and a toothbrush. There’s just no sense in paying for a suitcase when a backpack is enough. Nope, you’re packing light from here on in. You want to be nimble, to move easier. As in the new book “Who Could Ever Love You” by Mary L. Trump, you don’t need extra baggage.
How do you explain who you are?
That’s a question Mary L. Trump wrestled with all her life.
She was the younger child of a father who was prone to depression and alcoholism, and a mother who, Trump says, had little-to-no support system and suffered from “futility.” Trump was also the granddaughter of one of NewYork City’s most prominent landlords. And she is the niece of Donald Trump.
For years, that didn’t matter. For Mary Trump, childhoods were spent on her father’s boat, swimming in the ocean, or playing with kids in her neighborhood. Sundays were spent at “the House,” a mansion her grandparents lived in, where dinners were awkward because Mary’s grandmother disliked Mary’s mother, and Mary’s grandfather showed little but disdain for his oldest son, Mary’s father. In the midst of this was Uncle Donald, who seemed to enjoy “bullying” his gentle elder brother.
Mary Trump indicates that. as a child, she could clearly see the family turmoil, though she didn’t understand it. She adored her handsome, intelligent father but after her parents divorced and her father began to drink more and more, she began to avoid him — and her mother, too.
She began to realize that she was a lesbian. She sought solace at a private summer camp, where counselors took her under their wings. She reached for therapy before and after her father’s death, in part because of the family’s dysfunction and her feelings of “self-loathing.”
After a while, “I was finally becoming conscious of something I’d known,” she says, “at least on some level, all along – there was no way for me to fit into this family.”
So here’s the surprise: “Who Could Ever Love You” doesn’t contain much about politics, and not as much about the GOP Presidential candidate as you might expect, especially if you’ve read author Mary L. Trump’s previous books.
He’s in here. He’s just not the focus.
Instead, you’ll read about one woman’s life inside a family that’s famously chaotic, and how it left her with “trauma” that took decades to untangle and understand — and which may be hard for readers to follow sometimes, too. Mary Trump recalls unbelievable “damage” that she avers was perpetrated by her older relatives, and it’s gutpunch hard to read. Estrangements within the family and complications made worse by lawsuits that the author calls “my family’s love language” just add to the despair that begs for a happy ending.
You’ll need to read this book to see if you get that, but doing so will be emotionally wrought. Surely, there’s one side of the political fence that will enjoy this book more than the other, but either way, “Who Could Ever Love You” packs a punch.
— The Bookworm Sez
