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    Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir
    Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir
    Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir
    Audiobook12 hours

    Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir

    Written by Margaux Fragoso

    Narrated by Susan Bennett

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Acclaimed author Margaux Fragoso explores her childhood experience with a pedophile with painful honesty. Fragoso had met Peter Curran when she was only seven and he was 51. Desperate to escape being around her mentally unstable mother and her alcoholic father, Fragoso spent increasingly more time at Curran's home. Soon, Curran would guide their relationship into sexual territory-a relationship that ended with Curran's suicide 15 years later.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 29, 2011
    ISBN9781461803720

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    Reviews for Tiger, Tiger

    4/5

    137 ratings15 reviews

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    • 1/5
      A well-written, but almost unrelievedly depressing, chronicle of a little girl's grooming and sexual exploitation from the age of eight to her nearly suicidal twenties. There are numerous books, both novels and nonfiction, that can help young people who have been the victims of such abuse. Alas, this is not one of those books.Not recommended.
    • 4/5
      Quite a compelling read where the author goes back to her seven year old self- when she and her mother first met the seemingly affable Peter at a swimming pool.Margaux was the only child of a well-meaning but mentally ill mother - in and out of hospital. Her father could be scary, critical and a drinker.When Peter - living with a woman with two teenagers- welcomed mother and daughter into his home, frequently, it seemed at first a magical place. Indulged, with pets, trips out, kindness....only gradually did Peter want something in return.I thought one of the strongest aspects to it was the changing picture we got of Peter as Marghaux matured and started to see him - somewhat- for what he was. The kindly, wonderful adult slowly morphs into an unpleasing old-for-his age loser...
    • 4/5
      Uncomfortable and disturbing memoir of child abuse.
    • 5/5
      An excellent read. Horribly scary in that it makes a pedophile human. Naked and compelling it was not an easy read. I can't say I enjoyed the book because that would almost make me feel complicit in the molestation. I don't feel that the molestation was the only thing that really affected this woman though. Her mother was a little crazy, her dad macho and distant...I recommend this book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Margaux met Peter at a neighborhood swimming pool; they played together and became friends. He was 51 and she was seven. Margaux's father was critical and controlling and her mother, who had mental problems, was happy to take her to Peter's house for visits so she could get away from her husband. She had no idea that things became physical between them when Margaux was nine. Their relationship lasted for years, until Peter's suicide. This is a memoir of it. It's complicated, interesting, moving.As she got older she became almost completely isolated from people her age, spending all her time with Peter, alienated from her father who had made it clear she was a disappointment and from her mother who was in and out of mental hospitals. He was the only person who cared about her. But when she was interested in having a boyfriend he was pouty and unhappy. The balance switched so that she had the power to stay in their private world or break out. Throughout, she doesn't ask for vindication or revenge or even sympathy, just shows us her feelings. I respect that. The latter parts were hard for me because of resonances in my own but I have nothing but respect for her writing.
    • 4/5
      Many editorial reviews of this memoir are quite critical of it, saying that it fails to convey a lesson and that it does not condemn as harshly as it should. Some even go so far as to compliment her style, while derisively claiming that she's been made schizophrenic by the abuse and that this is reflected in the work. To use Fragoso's mother's mental illness as a slight against her and her writing is low enough, but it also misses the point of the work. She attempts, bravely, to convey the psychology of her abuser, to show and not tell us how Peter manipulated and deceived her and everyone around them in order to prolong and intensify, his sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse of her from the time she was eight to the time she was, incredibly, twenty two. Similarly, she puts us in the minds of her various selves through these ages, as she grew up through this ongoing abuse. She takes us through her own journey, and that is perhaps harder for a reader to deal with than to be constantly reminded by the present voice of the realizations and truths that are held by the survivor. A reader wants to be assured that an abuse survivor has triumphed, rather than inhabit how they felt before that triumph. Fragoso has written a memoir that through its subtly woven narrative demands empathy rather than sympathy, that asks for recognition rather than pity. That makes this a difficult book to read, and one could only imagine then how difficult it was to write, to inhabit the horror of your past and turn it into poetry that is literary, lyrical, and unflinching.
    • 5/5
      At a public swimming pool in Union City, New Jersey Margaux was 7 years old when she met 51-year-old Peter. Margaux’s family life was so dysfunctional and Peter seemed so “fun”, hence that chance meeting became a relationship lasting 15 years, until the time of Peter’s death by suicide. It would seem like such a nice story except for the fact that Peter was a pedophile.

      This book was difficult to read. It nauseated me. It made me angry. The depiction of Margaux’s father hit such a personal nerve that I had to close the book a few times and walk away from it. Peter made my skin crawl. Yet I kept reading. I would not have if this had been a work of fiction, but this was Ms. Fargoso’s personal account of what can happen when a child slips through the cracks and ends up in an adoring stranger’s basement.
    • 4/5
      This book should come with a label: Reader Discretion is Advised. I'm not sorry I read it but it was far more graphic than I expected. Exceptionally well written, however.
    • 4/5
      A really tough read, but brutally honest and beautifully written.
    • 3/5
      I kind of wish I had never read this book.In Tiger, Tiger, Margaux Fragoso tells the story of her fifteen year relationship with Peter - a relationship that began when Margaux was seven and Peter was fifty-one.Fragoso doesn't leave out details in her book, even when I wished she would. Her problems at home with her parents caused her to view Peter's house as a haven - though it was there that she suffered the most damage. At first, the whole thing seems fairly innocent. Margaux and her mother meet a nice-looking family at the public pool - parents with two boys just a little older than Margaux. They invite Margaux and her mother over to their house. When they arrive on the appointed day, the boys aren't even home and their mother, Ines, is busy with her own things around the house. That's a red flag right there. Later in the book, we learn that Peter and Ines are not married - Peter is Ines' live-in boyfriend, and the boys are not Peter's kids. For many months (Margaux and her mother go to Peter's house twice a week), Margaux's mother, Cassie, makes sure she is always with Margaux, but after a while, a trust develops and Cassie lets Peter take Margaux in the backyard, out for motorcycle rides, and down to the basement without supervision.Peter lets a trust develop between himself and Margaux, too, before he crosses any lines. It must be confusing for a child to be asked inappropriate things by an adult she trusts. The whole thing is sickening.Margaux is brave for telling her story and letting the world read it. As difficult as it may seem, Margaux portrays Peter as human and even likable in certain ways. She humanizes a pedophile, which is important for people like me who think of pedophiles as disgusting, inhuman lowlifes. They are, but they can also be manipulative, charming, and seem like the kind of person you'd like to have as a neighbor. That's the danger for parents. Who can you really trust with your children? How will you know whether someone is actually a good, nice person, or just waiting for the right moment to harm your child?In the memoirs themselves, Margaux simply tells the story - she doesn't add commentary tinged with hindsight. But in the prologue, she shares more of the big picture. She describes what is was like:"...spending time with a pedophile can be like a drug high. There was this girl [she means herself] who said it's as if the pedophile lives in a fantastic kind of reality, and that fantasticness infects everything. Kind of like they're children themselves, only full of the knowledge that children don't have. Their imaginations are stronger than kids' and they can build realities that small kids would never be able to dream up. They can make the child's world... ecstatic somehow. And when it's over, for people who've been through this, it's like coming off of heroin and, for years, they can't stop chasing the ghost of how it felt. One girl said that it's like the earth is scorched and the grass won't grow back. And the ground looks black and barren but inside it's still burning" (pg. 5).As a child from a troubled household (an alcoholic, abusive father and a mother with mental illness), Margaux's relationship with Peter made her feel that she was important to somebody, at least. Peter worshipped her, saved mementos, photographs, videos of their time together:"Peter would watch these every day toward the end of his life: Margaux scuffling in the dirt with Paws, Margaux playing Criminal on the couch, Margaux waving from atop a tree, Margaux blowing a kiss. Nobody watches Margaux now. Even Margaux herself is bored at the sight of Margaux in headbands, Margaux in cutoff jean shorts, Margaux with drenched hair, Margaux by the ailanthus tree where the white hammock used to hang" (pg. 7).Tiger, Tiger is a decidely uncomfortable book. It's graphic, emotional, and highly disturbing. No matter how valuable all the insight might be, I wish I hadn't read it. I can't recommend it, though that's not to say that the writing isn't good or the story powerful. Perhaps it's a little too powerful for my taste. If you do decide to read it, just know that you were warned.
    • 5/5
      It's hard to write a review that does justice to this book, probably the most courageous, haunting memoir I've ever read. If it had been fiction, I would have marveled at Fragoso's ability to take the reader into the secret, folie-a-deux world of a pedophile and his victim; a world in which, as Fragoso's story unfolds, we come to understand how it can be that both participants would dispute those characterizations. But it did happen, all the graphically described sexual encounters, all the emotional turmoil of loving a man 44 years older who wanted to do all these things. And she's able to tell us about it, as it happened - beginning with her 7 year old perspective and ending with his suicide, when she was 22 - with amazing compassion both for him and for herself.In so many memoirs, the truth of what happened is not transformed into literature - the authors lack either the psychological maturity or the writing ability. I'm just amazed that Fragoso, abused for most of her life, has both.
    • 3/5
      Disturbing but very educational. I wish I had known ahead of time how graphic she was going to be in telling her story - I don't begrudge her the opportunity to do so in the way she wanted but I just would've liked to know ahead of time.
    • 4/5
      This is a very courageous and heart wrenching book. Unrelenting in it's honesty it deserves to be read. Tiger,Tiger is the memoir of the relationship....and, sadly, it really is a relationship...between a child and a paedophile.Margaux is only seven years old when she casually swims up to Peter, aged 51, at the local pool and asks him if he wants to play. Thus begins their story which spans more than fifteen years. Margaux is a lonely child, and her unhappy life spent with a mentally ill mother and a mercurial father, makes it all the more easy for Peter to cast his spell over her. Indeed her mother adores Peter too, and he appears to be a charming family man who is genuinely fond of Margaux. In many ways he treats her more kindly than her own parents. What harm can there be in the fondness he displays for her?Slowly and insidiously, Peter becomes more intimate with Margaux and, quite obviously, this is difficult to read, but the writing is so beautiful it is almost as if the author has gone back in time and is writing as a seven year old. Indeed, throughout the book, Margaux retells their experiences in an age appropriate fashion. Because Margaux doesn't fit in at school and her homelife is so difficult, she finds herself spending more and more time with Peter. He is the one who loves her the most and he makes sure she knows that for his own benefit. I have always looked on paedophiles as monsters. This book told me so much more about them and what desperate sadness this "condition" brings to everyone it touches. It was, without doubt, a cathartic piece of writing for Margaux Fragoso and serves as a reminder to parents that not all adults are what they seem. I admire her deeply for her bravery in writing this book.This book was sent to me by Amazon to review.
    • 3/5
      "Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir" is the story of a young girl victimized during a 15-year span, from ages 7 through 22, by a pedophile. A mentally ill mother, and verbally abusive father set the stage for the appearance of Peter, a 51 year old on permanent disability, who showers the child, Margeaux, with all the praise, attention, and stability that she lacks in her homelife. The attention, of course, masks the pedophile's true intentions, which soon become clear.The most fascinating aspect of this story is the fact that it happened at all, for such a long time. I suppose that as a reader, everything that is wrong about the abuser is clearly obvious, yet the red flags are either not seen by the family, or dismissed as lies and gossip. At times you want to yell at the mother and father, and say "Are you that f**king blind??"Parts of the book were difficult to read, as the author hides nothing, but this is her story and one can't fault her on being truthful, no matter how distasteful some passages are. In the end, there is the satisfaction of her triumph, and the fact that though she was broken, she was not beyond repair.I'm not sure if this would be the kind of book that I would recommend to anyone, however, I did find it compelling.
    • 4/5
      I read a description that called Tiger Tiger Lolita from Lolita's point of view, but it was so much more. The author holds nothing back in her recall of bonding at age 7 to a serial pedophile and enduring a 15 year relationship with her abuser. Her treatment of him in the book is remarkable in the way he is so wholly rendered. I have tremendous admiration for the author's courage, intelligence and resilience after her family, school system, legal system and every other breathing adult she encounters fail to protect her.