Vertigo

In 1958, 16-year-old Louise DeSalvo saw Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo 11 times in one week, transfixed by the lead character's fainting spells (from which she, too, suffered) and by the image of a woman-as-imposter falling to her death. In her own Vertigo, DeSalvo vividly recounts her attempt to transcend the limits of her own working-class girlhood--as well as depression and family violence--to forge an identity based on her own desires.