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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…
Isobel’s Recent Updates
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Isobel Blackthorn
wrote a new blog post
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"Be prepared to have your emotions torn asunder
------ I am already a big fan of Blackthorn’s books and find that you can rely on the fact that you never quite know what to expect, except it will be a thoroughly good read. This book was no exception and" Read more of this review » |
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"Gorgeous Writing.
Ann, a 40 year-old geologist, is fleeing an unhappy marriage. She heads for sanctuary on the island of Lanzarote and meets Richard, an enigmatic writer is who staying on the island while researching for a historical novel. They both " Read more of this review » |
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Isobel Blackthorn
rated a book it was amazing
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| The Star Conspiracy is an engaging Young Adult novel that tells the story of two teenagers and their respective single parents, and the drama that unfolds when they all go on holiday to Crete. The story is told from the perspectives of Issy who atten ...more | |
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Feb 01, 2026 01:09AM
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"A really good read. It starts with the main character fleeing with her daughter to Scotland. She’s taken on as a housekeeper but the family in this book are hiding so many secrets. It seems they all have a dislike for each other and are not happy.
It" Read more of this review » |
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Isobel Blackthorn
rated a book it was amazing
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| I do love a quirky read, and A Choir of Assassins does not disappoint. The story is immediately engaging. First, we meet the Seven, a group of Knights Templar who gather at the Royal Peculiar, a round church in the City of London. All secrecy and hoo ...more | |
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Isobel Blackthorn
rated a book it was amazing
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| When a second death comes on the heels of the demise of a bookstore owner, it is down to devoted employee Garnet Stone to solve the mystery. She teams up with her grandparents and her flatmate to gather clues and solve the mystery. Thanks to some inh ...more | |
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Isobel Blackthorn
rated a book it was amazing
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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 | |
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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1840 | 863 | 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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