The survivor of extreme psychological and physical abuse, Diamond recounts her lifelong struggle to discover her true self in a beyond-harrowing memoir. 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.
Diamond (Model: A Memoir) describes the incredible story of her childhood spent on the run ... Diamond’s memoir is compulsively readable; for fans of suspense novels or memoirs like Tyler Wetherall’s No Way Home.
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 ... There comes a point in the family’s travels when the father decides his family should become Jewish ... Diamond, sadly, doesn’t bring to bear any adult wisdom to her descriptions of this, as she does in other instances of her father’s bad choices ... This is a big flaw in the book, especially now, as anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise ... Still, Diamond has a powerful story to tell, and she tells it well, creating strong characters and settings ... Diamond’s story is one of the family as oppressive, controlling cult ... Diamond raises as many questions as she answers, as the best books do.
