Secrets of the Black Box by Amanda Wolfe

Secrets of the Black Box is the first in Amanda Wolfe's autobiographical trilogy.  In Secrets Amanda tells us of her childhood and adolescence growing up in Canada in a cruel and unstable family and says, in a note to readers at the beginning of the book, "I believe that the true meaning of healing is understanding worthiness of oneself.  And that the sins of others inflicted upon you should not, No, in fact must not change or alter your true spirit or your ability to stay true to that spirit.  Yourself."

It seems like the author herself has, as an adult, been able to find that worthiness, peace, hope, and belief in her true spirit.  But that hope and optimism are very much not present in this first book of the trilogy.  Perhaps that will come more in the final two books. Readers who can identify with her troubled childhood may feel a comfort in the fact that they were not alone.

A bit about the series title -- Amanda says that she could always find the silver lining -- but that "[i]t was what was beneath the silver lining that was the problem."(page 103)  She goes on to say that finding the silver lining is "how you survived life." (page 108) As for the title of the book itself, she says, "I developed an imaginary little black box in my stomach, which I would put all this stuff into, and in the real world, none of this existed."(pages 167-8)

This book was extremely poorly edited and it was hard for me to get past that to think about other layers of the book.  Misplaced apostrophes & quotation marks, disagreeing verb tenses, misspelled words, needless repetition and odd uses of capital and lowercase letters were only the beginning.  A few examples:

"Well, technically five Melanie slept downstairs with my mother." (page 29)

"About two weeks after the car episode, my mom had been bugging my dad to get her some dirt from the garden in the front yard because it was dark and rich soil, and she wanted to put some potted plants along the back porch; but he still hadn't done it for her, so we were having breakfast oatmeal with brown sugar." (page 76)

"Chad had driven in to Ottawa really early in the morning.  To pick up my grandma we were all still asleep when they arrived." (page 152)

"She had three or four boyfriends at a time and was drinking too much, among other things.  That I did not want to know about." (page 333)

I'm willing to accept that the stream-of-consciousness style that is present throughout the book was, perhaps, an intentional choice on the author's part.  I'm less convinced, however, that it added anything to the story she was trying to tell. 

Secrets of the Black Box was painful to read -- both because of the subject matter and because of the hideous editing/writing style.  I can, however, get behind the message in Wolfe's epilogue, with which I will end this review.


"The decision to heal is up to you.  Only you can choose to stay in the place behind the wall.  Or keep things buried in your own version of the black box.  Or you can step out of it and find courage in knowing you are not to blame.  You have the strength to stand up to the people who have the power over us and take it back for yourself." (page 379)