Scarred (Never After Series)

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Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress and playwright who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than twelve films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. The bulk of the book is about how she got involved with the group, how the program worked and the various ideologies. The same brother responsible for both Tristan's tormented childhood and the scar that mars his face. This progress was set against the backdrop of tabloid outrage and Mary Whitehouse raving about sex and violence.

I was hoping that Scarred would give me some background on Mack and how she became involved and ended up the head sex slave master but it didn’t. I had read some news articles a few years ago about someone supposedly known from TV, an actrice helped this man and they were in a cult. What this means in practice for me as a reader is a lovely combination of nostalgic 'oh my gosh, I remember that' to 'I have GOT to see this'. I absolutely need to get hold of some of the more folkloric shows of the era like 'The Owl Service' and 'The Stone Tape' - they sound amazing.

I thought that this book could provide some insight on the inner-workings of the organization since she was a high-ranking member and one of the first to come forward. The fear of unemployment and the increase of poverty are examined, with TV documentaries covering it and dramas and comedies dealing with the people experiencing it. But, oh…there’s Rudolph Walker and Jack Smethurst from Love Thy Neighbour being racist to each other for laughs.

This is one woman’s account of how she got involved with NXIVM, her 12-year stint with the organization becoming one of the highest members of instructors and recruiters, how the organization took a dark turn and her blowing the whistle on what was happening before she got sucked further into the abyss. The rest of the book works as viewed through the eyes of a child or young adult, but really most of these 'scarred for life' type films were never remotely intended for children and would have been viewed by the authors as adults in the 80's. If you just finished watched The Vow on HBO, I highly recommend reading Sarah's book to get her full story.Parents today are hyper-sensitive to the media their children consume compared to in the past (not saying that is a good or bad thing). But this sort of hysteria ignores the real fears that British television was just reflecting back to its 80s audience: the fears of authority, disease, manipulation, poverty and desperation. It brings back the forgotten titles like the BBC’s 3-hour play Artemis 81; the Channel 4 sitcom They Came From Somewhere Else; the 1987 play The Gourmet by Kazuo Ishiguro. Of course there is coverage of the blatant sexism and racism of the era - the attitudes to women in TV comedy largely could be categorised as 'a bit of crumpet' or 'haggard battleaxes'.

As with everything in culture that hangs around long enough (The Beatles, the Star Wars saga, the concept of the superhero) 1970s nostalgia has darkened and complicated itself as its shelf-life has extended beyond its own meagre ambitions. This, however, didn't diminish my experience with the book or the entertainment it provided one iota. As such, expect to see things like, "(see page xx)" after a reference, where the 'xx' should have instead been a number.Not only has there never before been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its immediate past, but there has never before been a society that is able to access the immediate past so easily and so copiously. This book takes a nostalgic look at the 1970's with a modern lens and asks, 'what the fuck was going on', whilst also recognising how utterly brilliant it was too. In short, I absolutely loved, loved, loved this tribute to things that terrified British children five decades ago, and you better believe I've already plunged into Volume Two, which clocks in at over five hundred pages and only covers stuff that happened on television in the 1980s! At the same time, it doesn't let some of the uglier elements of the decade get a free pass either by pretending 'that's just how it was' whilst at the same time, not tut-tutting through a modern lens. You see, everyone regardless of the circumstances and quality of their upbringing, has experienced their own very special and specific sort of kindertrauma.