Have you, like me, been obsessively watching all those TV shows that have come out about hoarding lately? My good friend Jessie Sholl has just published a memoir on the subject, Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books). I read the galley several months ago and found it totally gripping. Here is what Jessie has to say on the subject:
Dirty Secret is the first memoir to be written by the child of a compulsive hoarder. How do you feel about breaking into uncharted territory?
I’m proud to be the first person to write a memoir about it, but I don’t feel particularly groundbreaking—I’m sure that if I hadn’t done it, someone else would have sooner rather than later. I’m just happy to get people talking about how hoarding affects families, and I’ll be thrilled if my book allows others to feel freer about exposing their secrets.
Were you concerned about how your mom would react to the book?
I asked her permission before I wrote a word of it, and if she’d objected at all, I wouldn’t have written it. Thankfully, she was absolutely supportive of the idea. She read most of the book before it was published and loved it. Read the rest of this entry »
