Burning the Vines

'Even if it's true, no one will believe you.'

This bleak appraisal was the response a young Michelle Mazal received when she first tried to tell her story to a relative. She, her three sisters and her mother lived for years under the shadow of her father's drunken violence and random sadism. All these years later, Mazal, a tough and compassionate survivor, is telling her story again; this time someone must listen.

In her powerful and evocative memoir, Mazal pieces together fragments of a life that convey both a child's love for her father and an adult's understanding of domestic violence. Memories of playing with her sisters, getting her teeth pulled out and riding her much-loved horses are undercut by moments of daily, normalised horror. Mazal captures the complexities of her dysfunctional family in an honest, open-hearted and insightful way. She knows, none better, that feelings of love, hate, security and fear nestle more closely together than we would like to acknowledge, and that the people we love can sometimes be the ones who hurt us the most.