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Isobel Blackthorn
Goodreads Author
Born
in London, The United Kingdom
Website
Twitter
Genre
Influences
Doris Lessing, Fay Weldon, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Barbara Hanraha
...more
Member Since
March 2012
URL
https://www.goodreads.com/isobelblackthorn
More books by Isobel Blackthorn…
Murder on the Great Ocean Walk
About Murder on the Great Ocean WalkWhen her zany neighbour Doris Cleaver invites Ruth Finlay on a hiking tour with a mixed group of trauma survivors, neither anticipates that they’ll have to solve a murder.
When one of the party, a nurse from Melbourne, is found dead in her room before they’ve even started the hike in Apollo Bay, they know there is a killer in their midst. Then, on that same d
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Isobel’s Recent Updates
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Isobel Blackthorn
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| When young and homeless Elle takes up an offer to sleep at Greyfriars’ Abbey she has no idea that what she’s walking into is much worse than the rain-soaked streets she’s eager to escape. Yet she soon finds the place so creepy that when Jade tells he ...more | |
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Isobel Blackthorn
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This Bright Life is a highly realistic portrayal of a poor, working-class suburb of the East End of Glasgow. After the renowned Netflix series Adolescence, this novel might seem at first like a second visit to familiar territory, namely what makes a y ...more |
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Isobel Blackthorn
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After reading Biddy Trott I have come to anticipate a certain style and wit from Donna Maria McCarthy and I was not disappointed. The Hangman’s Hitch is as dark and ribald and gruesome a novel there ever was. Meet Freddy, or Frederick Abbotsby Feltsha ...more |
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Isobel Blackthorn
liked
Michele Northwood's review
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Secrets Taken to the Grave (The Strathbairn Trilogy):
"This is the second book in “The Strathbairn Trilogy”,and well worth a read.
I was looking forward to this book, as I had devoured the first one and enjoyed it immensely. The story was easy to get into and there were several references to the first boo" Read more of this review » |
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Isobel Blackthorn
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Terry's review
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Secrets Taken to the Grave (The Strathbairn Trilogy Book 2):
"I loved the first one of this series so when I saw the 2nd was here, I just had to jump in.
The characters are so good! Annoying & fussy, some friendly with family vibes. These gothic style books cover, thriller, supernatural, the whole feel of them " Read more of this review » |
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Isobel Blackthorn
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| A fun and unusual read involving a group of sleuthing ghosts who set about solving their next case, that of the untimely and seemingly accidental death of the woman in charge of organising the upcoming village fun run. Falling off a ladder in an effo ...more | |
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Isobel Blackthorn
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| What a comical story this is! When Emma Graham arrives at St Judes Primary School as a substitute teacher and a novice to boot, she is convinced her luck has changed. Only, she gets off to a bad start as all new teachers do, and as she deals with the ...more | |
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Isobel Blackthorn
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| Liverpool Lullaby, the eighth in Brian L. Porter’s murder mystery series, is as much a thriller as a police procedural. Although the absence of gory detail along with the usual camaraderie and tension among the Merseyside Police Special Murder Team p ...more | |
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Isobel Blackthorn
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| Set in the far south of Texas where Mexican influences are strong, Norteño Nights opens with Minnesota attorney Janelle Richards chewing a corn chip at a party she has no interest in being at. It’s Cinco de Mayo, and the nephew of the party’s host an ...more | |
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Isobel Blackthorn
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At age twelve, Elaine goes to live with her grandparents in their lakeside home after a family violence turns into tragedy, and the boys next door become life long friends, especially Brian, her sweetheart, the man she eventually marries. At college, ...more |
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Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| Aussie Lovers of...: Summer Reading Challenge : 1st December 2018 - 28th February 2019 | 172 | 92 | Mar 02, 2019 10:17PM | |
| Cozy Mysteries : 2018-2019 Winter Challenge | 54 | 137 | Apr 07, 2019 02:06AM | |
Cozy Mysteries :
When You're Not Reading a Cozy . . .
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1853 | 861 | Apr 13, 2019 07:45AM |
“Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom.
But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the task of early adulthood――establishing independence and intimacy――burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and in memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships.
She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the task of early adulthood――establishing independence and intimacy――burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and in memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships.
She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
“Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
“Combat and rape, the public and private forms of organized social violence, are primarily experiences of adolescent and early adult life. The United States Army enlists young men at seventeen; the average age of the Vietnam combat soldier was nineteen. In many other countries boys are conscripted for military service while barely in their teens. Similarly, the period of highest risk for rape is in late adolescence. Half of all victims are aged twenty or younger at the time they are raped; three-quarters are between the ages of thirteen and twenty-six. The period of greatest psychological vulnerability is also in reality the period of greatest traumatic exposure, for both young men and young women. Rape and combat might thus be considered complementary social rites of initiation into the coercive violence at the foundation of adult society. They are the paradigmatic forms of trauma for women and men.”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
“The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.
Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.
The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.
The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.
The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.
The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .”
― Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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