A woman leaves her husband after eight years of abuse, she takes her child and run for her life, not knowing what will happen next. She doesn’t know if it’s the right thing. Doubt soon follows, but she isn’t going to go back to him, not now… not when she’s already been able to escape. Soon though, she becomes trapped in a world of sex, alcohol and self-loathing, but she works through it, trying her best to be a woman to be proud of. Unfortunately her alter-egos are trying to force her to be someone she’s not… This is a story of abuse, how to survive and most of all how to love yourself again.
Sin, Sushi and Survival is a memoir written by Erla Mari Diedericks, a journalist from South Africa. These are her accounts on being abused, how she survived a separation and ultimately the divorce. It’s about finding yourself again after having to endure verbal, physical and mental abuse for so many years, whilst trying your best to be a good mother. This book is the written accounts of a self-loathing woman who needed to desperately find herself in this chaotic world, before things went from bad to worse, though a few orgasms along the road to discovery wouldn’t hurt anyone, right?
As a South African female, I’m much too often faced with other women who have been abused. It’s an everyday occurrence in these parts and it’s something nobody can truly help you to deal with. Sin, Sushi and Survival talks about how you’re alone when you’re dealing with the aftermath of abuse, but it also talks about how you’ll likely try to search for the love you crave after taking that big step into the world again. Erla Mari Diedericks talks about her adventures when it comes to sex, sex clubs, sex with strangers and the self-loathing thereafter. She also talks about how she struggled to find herself and to love herself again. Frankly, it’s a terrible circle of lust-sex-regret and the constant voice in the back of her head telling her how despicable she is.
From a personal point of view, I almost feel that although Erla Mari Diedericks wrote this book to help other women that she in fact made herself a victim by doing so. I’m not saying that the story should not have been told, on the contrary women in South Africa needs a voice, but this voice victimised herself too often… making it a blunt retelling of what had happened (something that was necessary in order to make an impact on the reader). The book holds a lot of deep emotion in its pages, that’s for sure, but the writing is moderate and there are parts I frankly hated such as the Staccato sentences. Nobody. Talks. Like. This. Unless. They. Want. Kids. To. Listen. That may have been slightly overcritical, but there is nothing I despise more than Staccato sentences, because for a book reviewer I don’t just scan a book through, I read every single word, every single sentence and I weigh the good and the bad on a scale built from awesome. I read the punctuation in the way it should have been read and Staccato just gives me a headache with all those “point-making” nonsense.
Other than that though, there was hardly any editing problems (besides what I mentioned above) and frankly, it’s not a bad read. It’s a bit short though, but otherwise it’s a blunt self-help book for abused women who are trying to find themselves once again.
