Memoirs of a Terrorist (Margins of Literature (Dis))

This is a haunting experimental novel about a daughter raped by her father, and the consequences of repressing this memory. In a parallel narrative, the father analyzes the posthumous writings of his daughter for clues to her thoughts and behavior.

Memoirs of a Terrorist is a gripping experimental novel about a young woman raped at the age of fifteen by her father. Having repressed this crime from her conscious awareness, Megan Lloyd's short intense life becomes a quest for sexual and human identity. A privileged daughter from suburban southern California, the heroine writes about early periods of her life in revolutionary Berkeley as well as later events in Malibu, Dallas, Munich, and finally, Paris. Her failure to bring the repressed crime to consciousness reveals a tragic blind spot from which emerges the sexual bondage murder of her lover in a Munich hotel.

The heroine's internal story is told by her fragmentary diaries and stories that her father retrieves after her death as a suspected terrorist in Europe. As he approaches his own death years later, Arthur Lloyd attempts to comprehend his daughter by analyzing her texts, and finally confesses his crime to the reader. Thus two narrative voices, one male and one female, intersect, clash, and reinforce each other in this rich and complex text that weaves a tale of sexual violence and portrays quests for insight and redemption.

In Memoirs of a Terrorist the female body becomes the theater in which repression, gender, social relations, and haphazard natural events are played out. The novel is many things: a feminist picaresque story of development and decay, a psychological thriller, a haunting murder mystery and work of symbolism and myth in which the reader must ultimately answer the questions: Who is the real terrorist? Can the criminal find absolution? Is there any escape from the cycle of violence? Memoirs of a Terrorist confronts some of the most troubling issues of contemporary American society.