Really disturbing that humans actually did this
936352
Very well written narrative describing the life of an American slave. I'm amazed at the writers ability to make it through such terrible trials.
2080707
I investigated the people and quotes used in the book and realized how true this story could be. It's infuriating and scary as hell.
3944046
This book, which is a detailed manual of spanking, punishment and domination, reminds me of an incident which happened within the past few years. Several parents with a common interest were filming themselves spanking and punishing their kids in various ways and exchanging the tapes with each other. It seems they were viewing the tapes for the purpose of, how can I put it delicately, becoming excited (and I don't mean a trip to Disneyland kind of excited). I think Pearl and his wife have created the same thing here except in print instead of on VHS tapes. No doubt they exchange many exciting! stories with their approving readers about how they dominated, punished and whipped their kids. The really awful part though, is that they use the Bible to justify their sick fetish. These people are using God's name in vain. This books disgusts me in more ways than I can describe!
4713094
Parts of this are disgusting and child abuse. I cant believe we still publish this archaic nonsense. Please please don't do this to your child.
544868
TERATOLOGIST is a twisted, disturbing tale not for the those with a queasy stomach or a shaky faith. Farrington, a reclusive billionaire wants to offend God so egregiously that God will come to Earth to confront him, at which point Farrington will try to steal His power. He hopes to accomplish this by kidnapping horribly deformed people and stashing them in his mansion. He then kidnaps religious leaders, forces them into degrading sex with the deformed, and broadcasts videos of the encounters over the Internet, ruining not only the clerics but also the faith of their followers. A reporter and a photographer are lured to the mansion with the promise of an interview of Farrington but the real reason is to document his actions.

I was expecting a blasphemous, offensive novella, and I was appreciative of the rosary that came with the limited edition of the book, figuring I would need it when I finished reading. However, this was not the case. Even though Farrington tried to offend God, the authors were very respectful of God and religion and the goodness of humanity. As with anything, the best way to show off something is by contrast. Put a diamond on a white cloth and it looks unimpressive, but put it on a dark cloth and it shines. Similarly, horror emphasizes good by contrasting it with evil, and TERATOLOGIST affirms the power of God and the value of religion.

On the other hand, I was expecting a demented, erotic story and was not disappointed. The deformed people are at the extreme of human monstrosity. The sexual acts are the sickest and most depraved you'll ever read about. Hint: Don't read this book while eating lunch.

Don't worry about your soul if you read this book. Instead, worry about your sleep and the disturbing images that are sure to populate your nightmares.
108001
If there is any truth to this story at all then it seems to me that these people should be in jail paying for their crimes against humanity. It  really irks me to read a book that explains about bazaar situations without  a thread of proof to back up what they are writing. This was a story about  a town load of people who are totally and unmistakably sick beyond all  comprehension of normal God faring human beings. The book was a little too  explicit in many situations; enough to make the reader really sick  sometimes. If there really are lunatics like this out there, I'd say get  them now; maybe even with a taste of their own medicine on a State or  Federal Death Row. I say kill the desease before it groes. Read this with  an open mind, and beware, it is totally bazaar.
1596013
Matthew Pauly, a software programer,  is very brave to expose what many people suspect--that MKUltra and mind control experimentation is still going on even to this day.  What is shocking is that Canadians have been used as experimental subjects for US agents who work for American government intelligence agencies.  I had originally seen a YouTube video interview of Mr. Pauly which I found shocking, intriguing, interesting and informative.  I had not known that the drug Scopolamine has been used experimentally to obliterate a person's free will and render them little more than  a zombie readily amenable to  hypnotic suggestions that are in complete opposition to their character.  Matthew Pauly even reveals that he was used as an assassin and puts forth the idea that many of the terror events in recent years are perpetrated by government mind control subjects who have been dosed with Scopolamine and then given a hypnotic suggestion.  (I don't rule out such possibilities.)  I recommend that people watch his YouTube interviews and to also watch some videos about Scopolamine to learn more about this drug--which, incidentally, has valid medical uses and has long had a presence in the medical world.

 I have read other accounts and listened to other interviews by former MKUltra mind slaves who managed to escape and recover their memories.  Some have dedicated themselves to bringing this evil practice to public attention but most people cannot comprehend the level of evil that is necessary for this and emotionally they will reject that this even happens.  This particular memoir is different because it reveals the complicity between the American and Canadian governments that allows mind control experimentation on Canadians and also how Scopolamine is used in the program to induce submission.

Honestly, I am torn between giving this book 5 stars and maybe 2 stars.  Five stars because it is  important that people know what may actually be going on secretly in their own governments (it's very disturbing, to say the least) and 2 stars because the author's writing style is just so.......clinical.......that the emotional content is missing.  At times I felt like I was reading a column of numbers--really, is it important to nail down the time of an event to the exact minute or to trace out an exact route taken by noting the actual directions of the compass?

After reading this book and gaining an understanding that people can be mentally controlled against their will you will always wonder about some of the strange things that happen in our world and question whether the person or persons involved did what they did of their own free will-----or whether they were influenced by an evil mental programming.
2818860
First off let me say that I understand this is a fantasy but this story bothered me. As, it sounded like he was raping her. And, not the play acting kind but the honest to god kind. As, such this is not a good story. It was techi written correctly. It had no grammar mistakes for the most part no spelling ones either. But this was very disturbing.
4307808
Those who have given this book a positive review and advocate its principles horrify me.  It sickens me to think what is happening to these children. Parents who resort to beating their child/children until they are 'broken" so that they can "enjoy them" have, simply put, resorted to the worst behavior possible. Their children are behaving because they are terrified. They will be at a higher risk of growing up to become abusers themselves.

Parenting is hard work. It is not for the weak of mind or heart. Anyone who thinks that the answer to an unruly child is a beating doesn't deserve the privilege of being a parent.
4954195
I am not certain yet what disturbs me more: That there are people in the world that would actually believe this kind of farce or that there exists a person in this world who would actually use a terrible tragedy to espouse their own paranoid beliefs for the sake of profit. If you choose to read this mess of fiction then I would ask you only to remember those whose ,lives were taken on the eleventh of September, 2001. Remember that day and realize the way in which their memory is being used and tarnished by a man who appears to be nothing more than a very sick man in need of help. At this moment, and for the first time, I am truly ashamed to be an American and even more than that.. to be a human being. I am ashamed to share this world with someone so thoughtless and so self-obsessed with his own importance that he would commit this kind of travesty. For as long as people are sucked into this kind of maddening belief, with not a sense of reality to prove it, then the truth that each of you hope to find will remain hidden from you forever.
1619108
The book was well written; I don't have a problem with that. I'm just flabbergasted at the way men thought they were Gods and women should worship them and wait on them hand and foot! Basically raping 13 and 14 yr old girls and hurting them and expecting them to have lots of babies to build the army of the Lord. It's crazy!  I knew people lived like this but didn't expect it to still be this way in some areas of the world. It was appalling! Starving the woman and children and expecting them to work from sunup to sundown is terrible!
1111383
The anecdotes in this book are incredibly disturbing - whipping a FOUR MONTH OLD with a switch for trying to climb up steps? (Why not gate the steps?)

Turning a hose on a child who has an accident while potty training? (It's unrealistic to expect a child to never have an accident while learning to control their natural bodily functions.)

The authors should be IN JAIL as should any parent or caregiver who employs their techniques - which are CHILD ABUSE.

And shame on Amazon for selling this material.
3683467
I chose to read this after seeing the author doing an interview on TV. Very, very interesting. While it is one person's account and of course, there are those who are sure she is a complete liar, even if the book is half true, it is very disturbing. The life these children endure and the strategies used to keep families apart is completely unreal.
3414564
This book creeped me out, and not the good kind of creeped out.  It was disturbing.  The book was nothing but kids being abused in horrible ways. There were more than blatant sexual overtones to the story, and it's being marketed to the 9-12 age group. Count Olef, the children's creepy old adopted father, tries to force the 14 year old girl, Violet, to marry him, and threatens to kill her baby sister if she doesn't. There is a reference made to the "wedding night." The whole thing was just sick.  I'm 17, and I don't know if i'm gonna be able to get to sleep tonight, after reading this story.  Please don't give this book to a young child.
345653
Maybe writing this book was therapeutic for the author, however it is very disturbing to me that it is considered entertainment for the rest of us. Although the antics of the people surrounding this unfortunate child sound as if they are right out of Hollywood, they are not funny.  I feel pity for Augusten and disgust for his parental figures as they disregarded their greatest gift in order fulfill their own desires and self-destructive behavior. I guess it is fitting of Hollywood to continue to exploit this man's horrific childhood by making it a movie and calling it entertainment.  I will be skipping this DVD release.
2505261
Having read this "book" I was horrified and regret even purchasing the "story".  Not only for the people that are named, living and dead, and whose hometowns and some family members are also named, but for the child she so callously attacks over and over.  It is poorly written, poorly edited and written from a perspective that is skewed to the point of myopic.  From chapter one on it is obvious that this book is written by an individual whose own mental health is questionable.  Kathleen talks of being teased, tortured by being teased.  She talks of hating her life because it is not pristine and perfect, without the hated "males" in her world.  She talks of how she hates all males and how dirty and disgusting they are.  There are numerous rants regarding filth, dirt, poor people, fat people and people she perceives as not good enough.  Kathleen Hoy Foley talks of how she helped torture her brothers, beating them with a belt and not until she is in her 60s does she repent in any form for this behavior.  She talks of rape, however, she continued to date the father of the child she dispises for over 2 years.  Kathleen claims that she is the only one that saw this abusive behavior, that her mother ignored it and encouraged it.  Mrs. Foley's supposed and well publicized abuse was, in reading the book, something that was not only not sexual in nature, as far as the stepfather she acuses quite publically on her own website and her brothers, but apparently something she "dreamed" as happening.  In the end, it is a mindless rant that explains away an affair that she ended by refusing to face the world in a realistic fashion.  Kathleen is the female version of a mysoginist, hating all men and worse, she has no empathy for anyone at all.  This lack applies to the man she is now married to and claims to love.  Her hate of the child she bore is due to the fact that she sees the world in such a way as to believe that anyone that is not her is not perfect.  Descriptive in nature, she sees the world as clean and good or perverse and dirty and only she, her chosen off-spring and, by dint of rescuing her from her hated home, her husband, are worthy of life or living.  It is disturbing to say the least.
1800728
I saw the author of this book on TV, an appearance designed to publicize the book and boost its sales. They showed photos of her parents' cluttered home, a drawer full of old pens and pencils (so what?), and she spoke derisively about their hoarding tendencies while they lived in a small apartment.

I thought to myself, what kind of daughter would do such a thing to their own mother and father? How cruel and disrespectful to air the family's dirty laundry in public? Just to make money on a book? Maybe she should have also shown her mother's soiled underwear or her father's old socks with holes?

Lots of people could write unflattering books about their parents problems or misdeeds -- but we choose to respect them (and their memory after they are deceased) for giving us life and raising us into adulthood, and we would not want to make them look bad (only with the exception of severe abuse or criminality perhaps). The author of this book strikes me as an ingrate who doesn't have any idea which lines should not be crossed.

If this book was written about a fictional family, or made to look fictional, it would be a different story.  But Roz Chast made no effort to protect her parents' privacy, on the contrary. The book makes me cringe. I don't wish a child like that on anybody.