Award-Winning Memoir 2017 Readers’ FavoriteWhen Diane, a psychologist, falls in love with Charles, a charming and brilliant psychiatrist, there is laughter and flowers—and also darkness. After moving through infertility treatments and the trials of the adoption process as a united front, the couple is ultimately successful in creating a family. As time goes on, however, Charles becomes … Charles becomes increasingly critical and controlling, and Diane begins to feel barraged and battered. When she is diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, Charles is initially there for her, but his attentiveness quickly vanishes and is replaced by withdrawal, anger, and unfathomable sadism. What Diane previously thought were just Charles’ controlling ways are replaced by clear pathologic narcissism and emotional abuse that turns venomous at the very hour of her greatest need.
A memoir and a psychological love story that is at times tender and at times horrifying, Lost in the Reflecting Pool is a chronicle of one woman’s struggle to survive within—and ultimately break free of—a relationship with a man incapable of caring about anyone beyond himself.
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What a haunting real life look at the insides of a marriage to a psychopath.
I had this book for many months before I read it. Exhausted by our nation’s controlling narcissist, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read about another one, but the book revealed a lot about the personality and behaviors that we see on a national level. It also showed why it’s easy for some to succumb to the charms and ignore or minimize the dysfunction and abuse.
While a riveting memoir of the author’s marriage to a controlling narcissist, Lost in the Reflecting Pool is also much more. It’s a story of coping with illness, of family and friendship, resilience, finding one’s voice, and perhaps above all, (re)claiming one’s life. The book was beautifully written, insightful and inspiring.
The author a professional psychologist, shares her journey with a narcissistic husband, who just happens to be a psychiatrist. She bravely reflects on the harrowing journey she traveled through infertility and IVF treatments, the increasingly strange behaviour of her husband, her cancer diagnosis and the realization that in order to survive she must break away from his craziness.
This is a well written and thought provoking memoir that makes compulsive reading. Highly recommended.
Wow! Now I understand a troubling relationship I terminated decades ago. Although my experience wasn’t nearly as damaging as the author’s (I did not marry him), I’ve carried confusion and regret for years that really wasn’t all my fault. He too was a narcissist who became mean-spirited and angry when I did not “reflect” his image of himself. Women who find themselves in difficult relationships should read this book and perhaps recognize the red flags the author refused to see. It could save them a lot of heartache and perhaps even their lives.
Couldn’t put this book down once i started reading. Well written.
This is a great book. It is inspiring and hits close to home. This woman is a true survivor. I really enjoyed this story, and I really believe that all woman who have ever been in a bad relationship should read this.
A True Story written by a Strong Woman for Strong Women!
This story resonated with me on a personal level having had the misfortune of experiencing a narcissistic husband myself. This book was beautifully written and very moving. I could not put this book down from start to finish. The author’s narrative was captivating and relatable. I experienced every emotion that the author did when she lived it. I highly recommend this book, I found it to be healing!
Diane Pomerantz is a Baltimore-area psychologist, but first and foremost, she is a survivor. She has successfully battled an aggressive cancer as well as a 20-year emotionally-crippling marriage to Charles, a psychiatrist and a controlling narcissist, as she details in her grippingly readable memoir LOST IN THE REFLECTING POOL. I wholeheartedly recommend this fine work, provided to me by courtesy of the author and BookTasters NonFiction in exchange for an honest review.
Charles is a deeply disturbed man who gets pleasure out of playing mind games and undermining his wife, especially in relation to their children. He enters into an extramarital relationship with a patient, of whom he writes about in his journal, lamenting that he has to spend a day with his kids when he would rather spend the day with her. He fantasizes about his parents dying in a “fiery crash” so that he could get his inheritance “sooner, rather than later.” He provides zero support to the author during her most trying times—her unsuccessful attempts to carry a child to term, her frustration and heartbreak as a result of unproductive fertility treatments, and most egregiously, throughout her battle with a particularly vigorous cancer. Upon their breakup, he insists on giving her $20 per week for child support.
One might ask, “How did this marriage go so wrong?” Dr. Pomerantz addresses this question throughout the memoir also by applying rich stylistic touches that embellish meaning and mood. She suggests a keen sense of foreboding when she writes that “only thirty-six hours before our wedding was to begin, the clouds rolled in. What was at first dusky gray cloud cover turned to black, ominous masses covering the entire sky above us.” Later, as the marriage begins crumbling to bits, Dr. Pomerantz suggests a sense of unreality creeping in, a foreign world, as she writes of her house that “the shades of pewter-gray sky filtered through random windows and made odd and disconcerting patterns on the walls. Sounds echoed off the high ceilings. The multiple staircases up and down gave me a feeling that dangers lurked in hidden places.” The poetry of passages like these brings the writing out of reportage and provides it with a deep sense of humanity.
By their very nature of operating from memory, memoirs require an appropriate psychological distance on the part of authors so that they don’t come across as merely extended personal journal pieces, and Dr. Pomerantz succeeds admirably in walking the tightrope between emotion and its mimetic presentation; she is ever-aware of the reader throughout the narrative. The image of a reflecting pool is given symbolic implications early on, as she writes that while walking, she and Charles “came to a reflecting pool with a marble wall, down which water fell softly. . . .Whether in the light of the moon or from the lamppost above us, as we looked into the water, our images merged.” Such an image suggests Dr. Pomerantz’s theme of precariously shifting boundaries, of uncertainty; losing oneself within a relationship becomes the price paid for trying to make work what is essentially, and ultimately, unworkable.
Yet this memoir is in no way a mere “revenge” piece. Dr. Pomerantz writes with compassion, clarity, and understanding throughout the narrative. Her children provide her with the will to carry on, to rise above sickness and a dysfunctional home. She writes of her gratitude in seeing her children grow up to be productive and successful adults, especially given her worries that the cancer would take her during their childhood. As she asserts toward the conclusion, “the losses will always echo within me, but that does not mean they define me.” It’s certainly a lesson we can appreciate.
I say easy to read but yet I can’t imagine living her life. I am so glad the book was written but is sometimes hard to read because of the crap she goes through. Wow
It was easy see how the author was drawn into, and remained in an emotionally abusive relationship.
Well-written and not overly emotional. I read this quickly; wanting to know more.
Fantastic book. Well written with great insight into narcissism. Highly recommend.
Scary how close to home this hit.
Well written and easy to read. If you’ve been in a relationship with a controlling, narcisistic person, this is easy to relate to and you will recognize the feelings the author goes through.
Very repetitive and she can’t let go. She just kept repeating and repeating the same mistakes and expected her friends to carry her.
Very interesting trying to understand different backgrounds and personalities
Story is interesting but author is too contrived
psychological insight into men who hate women and the women who love them.
Aside from being poorly written, this book casts doubt on the author’s insights (or rather lack of) regarding her ex-husband. It is whiny and does not present good evidence for the ex-husbands diagnosis (her opinion) of being a narcissist. Other than the searing account of her cancer, this book presents a picture of a marriage not that different than many people’s. There was no physical abuse on his part, and while he was not a good husband by any measure, I do not think this subject was worthy of a book. It is a long, repetitive please feel sorry for me type of personal anecdotes.
This was a hard book to read. It was a memoir so the main character was the author. It was difficult to believe that a child psychologist couldn’t figure out
how to leave her husband sooner than she did (20 yrs).
It was informative. Narcissism is a terrible thing and makes living with a narcissistic person , tragic.