She does so in a gorgeous narrative with a visceral affection for the comforting, beguiling power of words. In Flunk.Start., Hall is able to resolve rather than expose to explore rather than condemn.

It's a story of navigating relationships-spiritual and familial-and how her desire to know has shaped Hall's life. is more than a recounting of her time in Scientology-it's also about growing up in an eccentric literary family, and the tale of her brilliant, tragic older brother, the playwright Oakley Hall III. Hall is a captivating guide, describing her slow absorption into the Church, but Flunk. is a candid, revealing memoir of what drew author, actress, and musician Sands Hall to Scientology, how she left the Church after nearly a decade, and how she has finally come to terms with those years that she had previously thought of as lost. Is there a term for a bad choice, one you continue to make, remaining on a path even as you understand your choice is not good for you? How do you abandon that life, and attempt to live a new one, making sense of the time you had given away so willingly? Flunk. (Mar.)Ĭorrection: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated the author's brother committed suicide.A captivating guide through one woman's struggle to find herself through Scientology, and how she finally escaped Hall reflects with brutal honesty on her decisions throughout this meticulously crafted book, which explores her negative experiences with Scientology and how her desire to please led her to believe in the unbelievable. Instead, after seven years within Scientology, she concludes that she has made a serious mistake. As her marriage crumbles and her career ebbs and flows, she turns to Scientology hoping to find answers. In the second section, the two narratives combine as she recounts the dark period in her early 20s following an incident in which her brother fell off a bridge and suffered brain damage. Ron Hubbard, such as the reactive mind versus the analytical mind and the interrogation practice of “auditing,” and the fear that came from the intense culture of secrecy. In the first section, she weaves together parallel narratives that describe her childhood alongside fraught years in her 30s within Scientology, describing the psychological ideas and tactics pioneered by L. Raised in a creative, bohemian family, she felt tremendous pressure from an early age to live up to the artistic expectations set by her parents-a pressure that helped to drive her away from southern California and into anorexia, an ill-fated marriage, and, eventually, Scientology’s promise of spiritual solace. Novelist and actress Hall ( Catching Heaven) probes her descent into Scientology in this impassioned, wonderfully constructed memoir.

Flunk. Start. by Sands Hall