Book overview
"Brooding and twisted, but beautiful in its honesty, A Veritable Household Pet will chill you to the bone as it simultaneously breaks your heart." -Paulette Kennedy, bestselling author of The Devil and Mrs. Davenport
Darla Gregory received a lobotomy at 11 years old ... and she was never the same.
Based on painfully true history, mixed with family drama, complex characters, and a gut-punch twist.
[Scribe's note: This is my sister Darla's story, as dictated to me. I have tried to remain as faithful to her diction and voice as I can, while also making it intelligible and coherent. Darla has progressed considerably since the lobotomy, but she is still unable to write by herself. I have added notes, interpolations, and supporting documentation where necessary to clarify or explain, or to add my own experience if relevant.
If you're wondering why it took so long for you to read this, I'd encourage you to keep your bratty thoughts to yourself. You're lucky I'm telling you the truth at all. This is the last thing I have to do for her, and I hope you're finally mature enough to handle it.]
"Painful, tragic, horrifying-yet achingly beautiful. A testament to resilience, this book held me in its thrall from the first page. Like peering into the most intimate thoughts of two sisters, it was like witnessing a car crash in slow motion-devastating, impossible to look away. A powerful novel about sisterhood, independence, freedom, and the fragile value of our minds and bodies. I wanted to cry, to scream, to rage-and still I could not look away. I have borne witness. Now I hope you will too." -Dawn Kurtagich, award-winning author of The Thorns and The Madness
"A blistering indictment of patriarchal power - A Veritable Household Pet is a luminous, tragic, and unputdownable story of the nightmare that is the theft of autonomy and identity, a quiet and constant terror women know all too well." -Haley Newlin, author of The Film You Are About to See and Take Your Turn, Teddy
"This book twisted my guts, my heart, and my head. There's toxic family dynamics that would make VC Andrews blush. There's body horror made all the worse by its historical accuracy. There's the ingenious device Hampton uses to tell the story from two POVs simultaneously. Plus, there's this constant competition in tone between hopelessness and determination. All underscored by the knowledge that this exact story may very well have occurred in reality. So that's the scariest part...all the ingredients existed for this story to be true. Something precisely like this probably did happen somewhere, sometime. What could be more tragic than that?" -Ben Young, author of Home