Book Review of Coming Clean: A Memoir by Kimberly Rae Miller

After reading Gwendolyn Knapp's supremely unsatisfying hoarding-related memoir (check out yesterday's review), I wanted to know if there were any books out there that tackled the same topic with more aplomb, so I put a copy of Coming Clean: A Memoir by Kimberly Rae Miller on hold at the library. Contrary to what the super disappointing cover design led me to believe (and, ugh, when I saw it, I was not expecting much), it was a night-and-day difference!

As I mentioned in the previous review of a memoir dealing with hoarding, I'm the kid of hoarders. My Dad is deceased, and my Mom is currently working to reform her hoarding ways, so, just as I was supremely disappointed in the carelessness and superficiality dripping from After A While You Just Get Used To It, I related deeply to the seriousness, frustration, and pain emanating from Coming Clean. Miller truly bared herself and her painful childhood experiences, growing up the daughter of hoarders in a time before there was a TV show, a cultural touchstone, a functional psychological diagnosis, or even a word for such behavior. In Coming Clean, Miller didn't attempt to offer up her parents' foibles and obvious psychological problems and their resultant hoarding and quirks for laughs, but instead gave a realistically detailed account of what it was like to grow up marooned on an island of filth. For those who have been there, Miller is clearly a comrade-in-arms. For those who haven't, just know that she provided an accurate depiction: that really is what it's like.

Coming Clean deals with much heavier issues than being unable to recycle some old newspapers. Miller's parents couldn't have been more loving, but with her dad's mental illness and her mom's severe back problems, they were inept at providing a clean, safe environment for their beloved daughter, or their pets. Even after growing up and physically escaping her parents' prison of stuff (one of Miller's main reasons for wanting to go away to college), she suffered anxiety, nightmares, and other symptoms of PTSD from her experiences living in their mess, as well as physical symptoms (infections, asthma, and other breathing problems) brought on by the clutter and germs. Miller also eloquently discusses the isolation she and her parents experienced because of their hoarding--from society, their family and friends, and from each other. Ultimately, Coming Clean is the story of a daughter who is at her wit's end with her parents' hoarding, but who loves them despite the fact that they can't let go of their useless collections of junk. It is a sad story. It is a true story. It is a story very much worth reading. Highly recommended.