MY FATHER'S HOUSE: A MEMOIR OF INCEST AND OF HEALING. Fraser, Sylvia. Toronto, Collins. 1988. 254pp, paper. $5.95, ISBN 0-00-215430-7. (A Collins Paperback). CIP Grades 10 and up Reviewed by Marc Shaw Volume 17 Number 1 1989 January My Father's House is Sylvia Fraser's sixth book and her first work of non-fiction. It is the deeply disturbing story of the sexual abuse suffered by the author at the hands of her father. This was an experience so traumatic that she managed, with the coping mechanism of an alter ego, to block her memories so completely that her secrets remained suppressed within her subconscious until her forties. The book traces the childhood terror she experienced from infancy through adolescence while growing up within the confines of a very normal, very middle-class Hamilton, Ontario, home. Although the abuse ended with adolescence and her coping devices kept the demons at bay, Fraser carried for decades inexplicable feelings and emotions towards her father and their house that remained unresolved until she wrote her story. The book's writing itself was part of the therapy that has finally freed her. Despite the harrowing nature of the story, Sylvia Fraser emerges a survivor. The themes of survival and forgiveness and how forgiveness becomes an important part of the healing process leave the reader assured of the author's successes while still mindful of the terrors she endured. This is an excellent, sensitively written book, and an important work in the process of child-abuse survivors coming forward and revealing that which was formerly one of society's nastiest secrets. Highly recommended. Marc Shaw, Kingston Learning Centre, Kingston, Ont