Customer Reviews

Call Me Crazy: A Memoir

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

Anne Heche writes an intimate, sad, story of a girl who went through hell. I found it to be poignant, surprising, and sweet. There are a couple of graphic descriptions of events in her life that most people would find a little disturbing.

it takes guts to pour out that much of yourself, candidly and honestly, and I reccommend this book just simply to hear about the world someone else has had to endure.

This memoir was intense, it's hard to beleived that a person can go threw this and survive, Anne is a sensitive, beautiful and talented actresse, it take lots of courage to write that type of book and I think people who said she just want publicity they the one who are truely crazy, come on will someone write these type of things for publicity, I beleive they are narrow, cruel and selfish people who said that. It was a good book but something was missing, the writing maybe is not that good, we tent to want to give up reading but if you are a fan of Anne Heche or just want to know about this wonderful person and how she survive threw her abuse has a child read it.

Thank you, Anne, for sharing with us the most intimate details of your life. The things Anne has been through are amazing and the work she has done on herself is incredible. That someone can grow up in such grotesque surroundings in which any sliver of individuality was completely suppressed and subsequently develop enough strength to face the demons that were left inside them self is amazing! I can't help but be inspired by her strength and by the message she puts forth in the book, that you cannot love or receive love from another person until you love yourself and allow yourself to be who you are. Cliché, yes, but Anne does a beautiful job of showing us how she is working to achieve just that. In this book Anne shares with us the most hideous parts of the abuse she endured as a child and the ugliness she later faced in therapy and in her life. I had to keep reminding myself that this was non-fiction; I just couldn't believe this really happened. Although some parts were tough to get through, upon finishing the book I feel hopeful. As a social worker, I am fully aware of the many forms of abuse that exist within our society. The only people that can stop the cycle of abuse are those stuck in the cycle, the victims of abuse. These people must posses the energy and the courage to face themselves and their beliefs about themselves that have been put in their head by their abuser so as to not perpetuate the abuse. Anne has proven that it is possible. This is a brave piece of work Anne has put together and I am inspired by her courage and strength!

This is a good "my story" book about DID. Those who suffer from it should draw strength from the book, especially those suffered from sexual abuse. Its well rounded book. I would recommend it. It is not a however a recovery book about DID as I felt some reviewers at Amazon.com thought it should be.

I'm the webowner of Mental Health Today and I found this book not only to be an enjoyable to read as I could not put it down, but felt that it will greatly assist others who have been sexually abused and hopefully society will begin to understand the effects of sexual abuse through this book.

The book does not mention Anne's particular diagnosis which may have been helpful to the reader, but does provide a clear account of what Anne experienced.

Anne discusses her thoughts and feelings about the sexual abuse she endured while growing up and made a connection between this abuse and the many psychotic episodes she experienced.

I feel this book will be extremely helpful for anyone who experiences some psychosis in their lives and/or for those who have been sexually abused.

I praise Anne highly for providing us with the experiences of her own life as I feel this book will not only be helpful to victims of abuse but for families as well to assist them in understanding what their loved one suffers.

I only hope that more celebrities will come forward with their stories, bringing mental health disorders more into the light.

I highly recommend this book.

This reviewer limits the number of bright light bios because typically they reveal nothing except blaming others for the negative and taking credit for the positive. For the decadent reasons of hearing her side of the alien stories (take your pick), this reviewer decided to see how clever Anne Heche reheats three day old fast food leftovers.

Surprisingly Ms. Heche determinedly opens her inner soul to readers revealing an alleged childhood of mostly psychological, but some physical abuse. The actress insists her past led to the tabloid-published accounts of her visiting a stranger ranting that a spaceship was taking her to heaven. Ms. Heche claims her father sexually molested her giving her herpes that went untreated because her mother believed in God's cure not modern medicine.

Following years of intense therapy, she now writes insightfully about her downward emotional dive bordering on the other side of lunacy. This includes the romance with Ellen DeGeneres, though that is somewhat rationalized. Still Ms. Heche turns herself inside out providing a deep poignant look filled with anger yet hope for the end product adult to overcome derogatory raising as a child. This is biography at its rawest yet strongest.

Harriet Klausner

Geez. This reads like another badly written abused gal celebrity whine. Not to dismiss the horror of abuse, but have you noticed the disproportionate number of celebrities with bad daddies and loveless homes who love to talk about it? In print? For money? For publicity? I swear there is a template floating around for these bios. YAWN.

At first I thought it was rather pretentious for any 31-year-old to be writing their autobiography, but after having read this book by Anne Heche, it is obvious to see that so much has already happened in her thus-far short life that it is worthy of an entire novel.

Most people only know of Anne Heche as the woman who dated Ellen DeGeneres, and then later broke up with her, went crazy, and then decided that she wasn't gay after all and subsequently married a man. While these are the facts that make the newspaper and tabloid headlines, they only scratch the surface of a very traumatic and eventful life. In this novel, Heche tells us about her life which began with an abusive childhood. Her father was a lazy unambitious tyrant who abused her emotionally, physically, and sexually and later confessed to being a homosexual and died of AIDS. She talks in depth about her ongoing struggles with religion, drugs, mental illness, and romance. She also talks about her rise to success as an actress, as well as the notoriety that comes with her career. I was particularly interested about her description of her delusions. At first she thinks she is God, herself, and then she schizophrenically develops an alter ego named Celestia.

I've seen most of the movies that Anne Heche has been in, but I never really thought much of her until I read this novel. She has certainly endured a lot in her life, and the scars of her past have not yet healed completely, but there's something to admire in her strength and courage. Being a straight male, I was hesitant to read this novel thinking that it was targeted towards women. However, I honestly enjoyed it and learned something from it. I recommend this book for everyone.

... If you have been fortunate in your life not to experience the betrayal, fear, anger and rejection by a trusted love one, count your blessings. But please, do not mane and wound those who have with your words of disbelief and ridicule. For Ms. Heche to stand before you and bare her soul as she did with her book, she had to summon a massive array of strength and courage. I applaud her true portrayal of her life. I applaud and congratulate her on her courage to come forward, to face the harsh criticism that I know she knew she'd have to face. And more importantly, I thank her for making her abuse known, for standing tall and taking it on the shoulder for all the rest of us who walk quietly behind her. I would highly recommend Ms. Heche's book to anyone.

Actor Heche became tabloid fodder for her lesbian relationship with comedian Ellen DeGeneres and a bizarre and strange incident in which Heche showed up at a total stranger's door raving and screaming about a spaceship that was coming to take her to heaven. In this harrowing and quite disturbing (I I dare say so) autobiography, Heche unflinchingly and very candidly lays bare the abuse and psychological trauma that led her to that moment. She grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family rife with dysfunction (e.g., a father who, she says, sexually molested her). Her resulting case of herpes went untreated because her mother didn't believe in doctors and might have caused her neurosis. Heche's father also disappeared for weeks at a time (she later learned he was stealing away to have homosexual affairs) and rarely seemed to be employed. The children were forbidden to ask any questions, under threat of being beaten with a wooden spoon. Now, with 13 years of therapy behind her, Heche is able to talk insightfully about her emotional landscape. One could make a statement that was suffereing from Neurotic ideas and was having problems with the ego, superego and the id. At one point, she believed herself to be a heavenly messenger from a "fourth dimension" of pure love; looking back, she realizes that this insanity was her subconscious way of surrounding herself with the love she craved, after being coldly rejected by her family. Heche says that she was attracted to DeGeneres's strong self-image, so different from her own shattered psyche (no she did not fall in love with Ellen becuase she was a lesbian per se as some people would have you believe, I think she was searching for what she did have not have in her own personal life). She doesn't describe herself as a lesbian, saying, "I fell in love with a person, not a gender," and was surprised and appalled that the relationship evoked such a strong negative reaction in the media. Heche is a superb narrator. Raw with emotion, her voice is by turns sorrowful, enraged and hopeful ( and insane at times, filled with neurosis), drawing the listener into her story.