Book Review: Go Ask Ogre: Letters From A Deathrock Cutter, by Jolene Siana - Page 3

Siana, self-consciously backstage for the first time after writing Ogre several months' worth of her nakedly emotional letters, writes: "I almost said Ni-vek. Then I almost said Ny-vek then I said 'Kevin,' and he turned around." That's it in a nutshell, really. Siana calls out to another human being from the absolute purity of her unhappiness, and in the undisguised innocence of her desire to be heard and recognized, she is. It’s especially poetic that Ogre's first words when he sees her are her name.

Most incredibly, though, I love that Ogre saved her letters and returned them to her 9 years later, in what she rightly calls an act of profound kindness, and fully supported her in collecting them into this book. He hadn't read every one of them, but he'd kept them safe, and years after she had stopped writing to him, Siana met Ogre by chance in a Los Angeles club. He told her that he'd worried about her, but he'd known she wouldn’t commit suicide, and offered to return them to her.

It’s easy to make fun of little girls and the love they bear their Ogres. Almost all little girls have one. I certainly did. It’s easy to look at a teenager's over-wrought emotional turmoil, dreams of something finer, and faraway loves, and see only short-sighted pathos. It's also easy to bill this book as a memoir of teen-aged angst and mental illness; but Go Ask Ogre is so much more, and so much better than that.

Jolene Siana's story is one of survival, and of rising out of the depths of a personal hell largely through the power of self-expression. It’s also about the vital role that art can play in our lives, both as audience, and through our own practice of it. It's sad, funny, truthful, good-hearted and genuinely moving.

I loved it, and I recommend it whole-heartedly.
Edited: PC

Article Author: Jaime Nichols

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