Welcome to the blog tour for Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood by. Cheryl Diamond!
“A riveting tale of trauma and resilience.”
—People Magazine
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Title: Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood
Author: Kate Bromley
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 6/14/22
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Categories: Memoir
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from Algonquin Books in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Thank you to Algonquin Books for giving me a chance to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review!
Cheryl Diamond had an outlaw childhood beyond the imaginings of most. By age nine, she had lived in more than a dozen countries on five continents and had assumed six identities as her parents evaded Interpol and other law enforcement agencies. While her family lived on the run, she would learn math on an abacus, train as an Olympic hopeful, practice Sikhism and then celebrate her bat mitzvah, come to terms with the disappearance of her brother, become a successful fashion model, and ultimately watch her unconventional yet close-knit family implode. Diamond’s unforgettable memoir, NOWHERE GIRL: A MEMOIR OF A FUGITIVE CHILDHOOD (Available in Paperback: June 14, 2022; $16.95), is a harrowing, clear-sighted, and surprisingly humor-filled testament to a childhood lost and an adulthood found. With its page-turning candor about forged passports and midnights escapes, this is, in the end, the searing story of how lies can destroy a family and how truth can set us free.
Diamond, whose acclaimed first book, Model: A Memoir, earned her accolades as “America’s next top author” in The New York Times Style Magazine, begins her story with her earliest memories as a four-year-old in India. Even at that tender age she had been schooled by her complicated and controlling father to never make a mistake, never betray the family, and never become attached to a place or other people. As the family continent-hopped, switched religions, paid for everything in cash, assumed new names time and again—always one step ahead of the law—young Cheryl (then called Bhajan) developed the burning need to achieve and win approval. By twenty-three she had seen so much of the world, but only through a peculiar lens that had somehow become normal. And she was plagued by fundamental questions: Who am I? And how can I find the courage to break away from the people I love most – because escaping is the only way to survive.
Content Warning: all kinds of abuse, illness, sexual harassment, incest
I haven’t read a memoir in awhile but I found the premise of this story very intriguing. When I was reading Cheryl/Bhajan’s story I for one was amazed that she could remember so far back into her childhood and with so much detail. I don’t remember anything at age 4! But her childhood is unique, scary, and quite traumatic.
I found it to be a very quick read, especially in her early years because she and her family were on the run and traveled so much, barely setting roots anywhere – their whole life was one of multiple identities, loads of lies and I can’t imagine how they even kept it up. Of course eventually things fell apart.
A lot of the chapters end abruptly but I think that works for the most part because their life was always changing but by the end I felt like the story like chapters of her life, were fleeting. Like as a reader, I never got to put down roots into the story also, with her life in her 20’s really felt like it sped by quickly. There was modeling, then Cheryl seeing her dad for what he truly was and suffering from Crohn’s disease but it all seemed so rushed.
I can’t imagine the abuse all of them went through trying to please their father. And what kind of upbringing is that for children? I felt horrible for Cheryl and her siblings. Their whole family was so toxic. All her life it seems she was trapped – it was nice to see there was a happy ending and healing.
Why you should read it:
- a family on the run – pretty wild story
- to see how it ends and if they get caught
- Cheryl’s determination to heal from her traumatic childhood
Why you might not want to read it:
- it’s a quick read but a lot of the chapters also feel rushed and abrupt – there were times I wondered how true these details were, especially when she was young
- her father is a horrible man
My Thoughts:
Overall, I found this memoir pretty entertaining but also scary and sad. I don’t wish that kind of lifestyle on any child and it was just sad to read about what she went through – even if she had happy memories, there were so many scary ones that she had to internalize all her childhood. I’m glad she came out of the experience alive and learning how to heal with therapy, and knowing who to cut from her life.
📚 ~ Yolanda
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cheryl Diamond is now a citizen of Luxembourg and lives between there and Rome. Her behind-the-scenes account of life as a teenage model, Model: A Memoir, was published in 2008. Diamond´s second book, Naked Rome, reveals the Eternal City through the eyes of its most fascinating people.
“A shocking rollercoaster ride of a story that shares secrets of life on the run but also asks big questions about what family means and who we truly are, no matter what the name on a passport might say.”
—Town & Country
“Within the autobiographical subset of children-overcoming-adversity that was defined by Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle (2005) and Tara Westover’s Educated (2018), Diamond’s tale might just be the most mind-blowing of them all.”
—Booklist, Starred Review
“Like Tara Westover’s Educated, Cheryl Diamond’s memoir tells the harrowing story of how crippling a childhood can be under the despotic narcissistic rule of a controlling father….”
—New York Journal of Books
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