Book Review

Secret Girl: A Memoir
by Molly Bruce Jacobs
St. Martin's Press, 2006
www.stmartins.com.
ISBN: 0312320949

Everyone wishes at one time or another that they had a secret brother or sister whom they never knew, someone with whom they could bond in those moments of need that invariably present themselves in life. For Molly Bruce ("Brucie") Jacobs, author of the memoir Secret Girl, her secret sister Anne is one such unexpected surprise, although not in the way that one might imagine.

The Jacobs do what most families do in the 1950s when faced with such a situation—they institutionalize Anne, and keep knowledge of her existence from her twin, Laura, and her older sister, Brucie. Incredibly, Brucie and Laura do not learn of Anne's existence until they are 13 and 11, respectively, and during a family vacation at that. Like their parents, who take great pains not to acknowledge Anne's existence, Brucie and Laura live their lives with the usual pains and rewards of well-connected families and are content to let Anne recede in their fuzzy memories.

It is not until Brucie is 38, after a failed marriage, an unhappy career as a lawyer, disappointment with her parents, and struggles with alcoholism that she decides to visit Anne at her group home (she had since been forced from Rosewood State Hospital due to the massive budget cuts of the 1980s). It is, as Brucie's therapist rightfully predicts, "the first real thing you ever did."

Secret Girl is not a memoir that ties up neatly, nor has a clear beginning. Jacobs writes cyclically, rather than linearly, as if to zero in on her feelings and the truth of Anne's life. It is a technique that is not without risks. For instance, although the reader discovers immediately that Jacobs has made contact with Anne, Jacobs doesn't actually recall this meeting until more than halfway through the memoir, preferring instead to detail Anne's medical records, to speculate about her life at Rosewood State Hospital, and to wax poetic about her own upbringing. Jacobs deprives readers of the beginning punch and speed needed for them to fully engage.

The biggest problem with Secret Girl, however, is that it's much too short. Certainly, there are only so many scenarios about which Jacobs can speculate regarding her parents' decision to institutionalize Anne, Anne's life at Rosewood, their own thoughts when they see her during a family gathering years later, but even when Jacobs turns to her own life to put together the pieces Anne's absence has helped to create, the reader is enlightened only through fits and starts—how did Jacobs descend into alcoholism? How does she meet Warren? When and why does she leave Ben?

Surely these details, although distracting from Anne's life, would serve to round out the rough edges contained in a scant two-hundred pages. And how, if Jacobs spends five years with Anne after their first meeting, is the reader only given three or four accounts of the time they spend together? Were meetings between the two really this rare? It is hard to piece together by the author's accounts.

These problems aside, when the reader does meet Anne, she literally jumps out of the book and says hello. Jacobs is able to paint such a stark image of her sister with only a few brush strokes (her loud, man's voice, her preference for red purses, her love of McDonald's hamburgers and iced tea) that the reader feels as if he or she actually knows Anne, could spot her on the street. When Anne takes over Secret Girl, the reader hopes she never relinquishes it.

Like all family histories, there is some closure, but there is also loss. In the end, Jacobs doesn't try to judge or lecture or romanticize a terribly difficult situation, and that's what ultimately makes Secret Girl such a haunting read.