Dirty Secret

November 29, 2010
In this peculiar exercise of catharsis, Sholl, a journalist in New York, reflects on her frequently mortifying experience growing up with a pathological hoarder. When her 63-year-old mother informed the author that she had to undergo surgery for colon cancer, Sholl was compelled to return to her hometown of Minneapolis and sign papers assuming ownership of her mother's house—a problematic place, which was already an alarming repository of junk in her grade-school years when her parents divorced and Sholl decided to live with her "normal" father and stepmother instead. Fired for being too slow at her job at a nursing home, Sholl's mother, Helen, is a troubled character with abandonment issues from her own parents, suffering from extreme indecisiveness and probable depression. Over the week-long visit, Sholl attempts to clean the house and contracts scabies, which subsequently spreads to her father and husband. Sholl's portrait of her mother is one of the most unflattering of recent memorable accounts; it's unflinching in its determination to reveal her shameful secret for the emotional liberation, one hopes, of both mother and daughter.

October 15, 2010

Freelance writer Sholl (Creative Writing/New School Univ.; co-editor: Travelers' Tales Prague and the Czech Republic, 2006) humanizes her mother's disorder of hoarding.

When the author received a phone call from her mother, Helen, who told her she had been diagnosed with cancer and wanted to sign her house over to Sholl due to rising medical expenses, she was saddened by the news but also appalled at the idea of owning the house, which was filthy, grease-caked and dust-choked, clogged to the eaves with "just so much junk, so much worthless, heartbreaking junk." But Sholl, her mother's keeper since childhood, dutifully went to care for her and clean up her mess. While there, the author took a long look at her mother's unsteady mental state, reliving episodes of outlandish behavior that now found expression in hoarding, a lack of self-awareness, immunity to criticism, disorganization and neglectfulness. And there was more in her Helen's past, deeper, darker stuff like abandonment and physical abuse that spilled over into Sholl's life. Meanwhile, the author was looking for a reliable, nurturing mother under the moth-eaten, knee-length sweaters, of which there were 130 more at home. In a pleasant surprise, Sholl coaxes tragicomic elements from the depressing proceedings—as when everyone contracted a seemingly incurable case of scabies, courtesy of her mother's hellhole, or the time she discovered the cremated remains of her mother's longtime boyfriend buried under a pile of yarn, two lava lamps and a stack of old newspapers. Most poignant, though, is the secret shame and embarrassment of her mother's strangeness that Sholl lugged around for so many years. Eventually, she found sympathy and understanding. "The more I talked about my mother's compulsive hoarding," she writes, "the weaker my secret became. Until it was gone."

Affecting and illuminating.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2010
When her mother was diagnosed with colon cancer, Sholl was faced with a dread worse than the disease, that of taking on responsibility for her mothers house, filthy and chaotic from years of hoarding. Sholl had grown up in the house in Minneapolis until her parents divorce, when she eventually went to live with her father and stepmother not far from the house that so shamed her. Shed spent her adolescence embarrassed by her mothers mental illness: the hoarding, compulsive shopping, indecisiveness, and occasional cruelty and abuse. Now married and living in New York, she could not rid herself of the obligation and shame or the alternating emotions of fury and protectiveness. Forced to deal with her mother, Sholl waded through garbage (unopened mail, broken appliances, moldy food, and scores of identical items bought on shopping sprees), memories, and research to find a deeper understanding of her mothers mental disorder. She offers a compelling and compassionate perspective on an illness suffered by an estimated six million Americans that has only recently been explored through reality television programs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)