Tiger, Tiger

by Margaux Fragoso

Overview

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011
A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title
Tiger, Tiger is a Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction title for 2011
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title

One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is fifty-one. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child's paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice.

In time, he insidiously takes on the role of Margaux's playmate, father, and lover. Charming and manipulative, Peter burrows into every aspect of Margaux's life and transforms her from a child fizzing with imagination and affection into a brainwashed young woman on the verge of suicide. But when she is twenty-two, it is Peter--ill, and wracked with guilt--who kills himself, at the age of sixty-six.

Told with lyricism, depth, and mesmerizing clarity, Tiger, Tiger vividly illustrates the healing power of memory and disclosure. This extraordinary memoir is an unprecedented glimpse into the psyche of a young girl in free fall and conveys to readers--including parents and survivors of abuse--just how completely a pedophile enchants his victim and binds her to him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250002426
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	01/31/2012
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	446,619
Product dimensions:	5.58(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Margaux Fragoso (1979 - 2017) completed her PhD in English and creative writing at Binghamton University. Her short stories and poems appeared in The Literary Review and Barrow Street, among other literary journals. She is the author of the memoir, Tiger, Tiger.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Prologue 3

Part I

1 "Can i play with you?" 11

2 The two-storyhouse 20

3 A bad habit 27

4 Savages 37

5 Higher, Higher 46

6 "Eight is the Most Beautiful Age for a girl" 52

7 Karen, Mysister, Mysister 70

8 "Only if you want to" 83

9 "It's not wrong to love you" 89

10 "There's something very wrong with that man" 99

11 Circle, Circle, Dot, Dot 112

12 The flowering nightgown 120

13 Our little secret 132

Part II

14 The reunion 141

15 The dowry 157

16 Cathy and paul 171

17 Rescue me 179

18 Nina 188

19 The falls 202

20 "The devil made me do it" 212

21 Prettybabies 221

22 Tying the knot 227

23 The confessional 236

24 Stranger in the mirror 242

25 The dropout 255

26 The woman in the tree 269

27 The contract 276

28 "The tiger's spring" 280

Part III

29 Rivals 291

30 The loan 295

31 The inheritance 303

Afterword 317

Acknowledgments 321

Reading Group Guide

1. Margaux Fragoso loved storytelling and role playing as a child, and Peter exploited these creative traits. How did her gift for narrative ultimately become part of her healing? How can the vividly written scenes of her memoir help others face the truth with clarity and courage?

2. As the ones who stayed home while others provided for them, what common ground did Margaux's mother and Peter share? What does Margaux's story tell us about the way children are sometimes forced to take on a care giving role?

3. Margaux describes the intense exhilaration of being with Peter, a high that nothing else could match. When has someone tried to blur your concepts of joy and harm, making you vulnerable to this sense of exhilaration?

4. Peter's many animals were part of the allure for Margaux. How did they reflect his relationship to her, marked by captivity? Did the sight of his caged, domesticated animals encourage her to fantasize about being a wild animal?

5. How did your impressions of Poppa shift throughout the memoir? Did you sympathize with him, or did you blame him for making his wife and daughter long to escape?

6. How did Tiger, Tiger change the way you think of your own childhood? When you were a child, were there any adults you could turn to no matter what, or were you on your own?

7. One of the most haunting aspects of Margaux's story is that many adults came close to uncovering the truth; even after Peter abused his daughters, he escaped scrutiny and was still able to become a foster father. And even after serving a jail sentence because of accusations made by his foster child, he was able to continue his relationship with Margaux. How did Peter keep Margaux's mother and Inès fooled? Did the social worker unwittingly undermine her case against Peter, or did he and Margaux simply outsmart her? After reading Tiger, Tiger, what do you think is the best way to be vigilant without wrongly accusing members of your community?

8. Margaux reveals the barter system Peter established, though in fact their arrangement cost her dearly. How did Peter "compensate" Margaux? Margaux liked to fantasize about being a fierce adult woman, savoring her secret "marriage" to Peter; he fantasized about precisely the opposite image of her. Beyond the realm of sex, how did they gratify each other? What kept Peter from rejecting Margaux even as she grew into her twenties?

9. Though Peter damaged all aspects of Margaux's young life, from her ability to form supportive friendships to her faith in unconditional love, she proved repeatedly to be a survivor, even after attempting suicide. Where did this kernel of strength come from? What nurtures strength in even the most wounded among us?

10. How does Peter's occupation as a locksmith serve as a metaphor for his pedophilia? What gave him the tools to unlock so many vulnerable people, gaining their trust? Do you think Margaux could ever have "changed the locks" on her psyche if Peter had not committed suicide?

11. What can we learn from Peter's memories of being a victim of abuse throughout his childhood? What would it take to transform society's approach to this addiction, putting faith in rehabilitation?

12. Peter insisted that he did not sexually abuse Ricky. How did you react to this? Regardless of those claims, what harm did Miguel and Ricky experience in Peter's household?

13. What did Margaux's parents teach her about the roles of men and women? Were any of their lessons accurate? Who were your most powerful role models? Did they teach you the truth about the world?

14. How does Margaux's voice shift in the epilogue, in which she is clear-eyed about the utter vulnerability of a child and the complete blame that belongs to an adult abuser? While reading the memoir, did you ever find yourself vulnerable to Peter's logic?

15. Now the mother of a little girl and the bearer of a PhD, Margaux Fragoso is living proof of the hope and healing that can emerge even after years of abuse. She credits her recovery to writing and therapy, including new techniques for trauma survivors. Do you know of someone who could benefit from these therapies? If so, how could you begin a conversation to put them on the road to recovery?

Editorial Reviews

Tiger, Tiger will start a thousand conversations. Margaux Fragoso achieves the unthinkable with empathic clarity: she humanizes a pedophile. In doing so, she makes his crime unimaginably more frightening. Her portrayal of their relationship is shocking, revelatory, and fearless. As the story of a victim, it is gripping; as a work of literature, it's a triumph.” —Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

“A courageous memoir of sexual violation and a childhood not just stolen but obliterated…Fragoso shines a bright light of transformation into the darkest corners of an unthinkable (but all too common) past.” —Pam Houston, More

“Astonishing…Brilliantly reveals her as more than a survivor: First and foremost, Fragoso is an artist.” —Marie Claire

“Told in a voice that combines childlike wonder with grown-up wisdom…Fragoso manages to tell a disturbing story beautifully.” —The Washington Post

“Margaux Fragoso has a remarkable lyric gift.…At once beautiful and appalling, a true-life Lolita.” —New York magazine

“Her tale loops amazingly around her own coming-of-age and sets her down in adulthood with a transformative twist.…It breaks the mold.…An astonishing and heartbreaking drama.” —Elle

“Written without self-pity, rancor, or even judgment…Tiger, Tiger offers us yet another opportunity to open our eyes and redeem ourselves.” —Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times

“A born storyteller…A call for awareness, understanding, prevention, and healing.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Ms. Fragoso is a poet….The cosmic profundity of what she has experienced…is inextricable from her gift as a narrator and contemplator of her own experience.” —New York Observer

“There are some experiences that come laced with a sense of indelible influence—-certain train rides that you know you'll remember forever even as they're happening.…Reading Tiger, Tiger produces one of those sensations.” —The Boston Globe

“In this gut-wrenching memoir of sexual abuse, [Margaux Fragoso] explores with unflinching honesty the ways in which pedophiles can manipulate their ways into the lives of children. . . . Fragoso's sense of alienation—Curran controlled her world for more than half her life—is palpable in her telling. Using her own diaries and the myriad letters, diaries, and photographs Curran left behind, Fragoso eloquently depicts psychological and sexual abuse in disturbing detail.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Disqueting . . . Culled from the four diaries she kept during the ordeal, Fragoso writes with searing honesty about her serpentine entanglement and of Curran's calculated, menacing exploitation of her. Intensive psychotherapy and new motherhood provide a hopeful coda to her unspeakable experience. A gripping, tragic and unforgettable chronicle of lost innocence and abuse.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“You may think you've already decided about a child's ordeal with a sexual predator, but under Margaux Fragoso's command you will consider the richest depths of experience, terrible, bright, and beautiful. Fragoso writes with unguarded grace and provides a voice—real and haunting—for those children, everywhere among us, who are deprived of theirs.” —Susanna Sonnenberg, author of Her Last Death

“Tiger, Tiger is stunning, in all the possible manifestations of that word.” —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

“Once in a generation, an essential book—a necessary book—comes along and challenges our bedrock assumptions about life. Margaux Fragoso's Tiger, Tiger is that book. Family life, the corruption of innocence, sexual abuse, pedophilia—all are unflinchingly yet exquisitely rendered as Fragoso experienced them. You will never view childhood the same way after reading Fragoso's monumentally important book.” —Louise DeSalvo, author of Writing as a Way of Healing

From the Publisher

Told in a voice that combines childlike wonder with grown-up wisdom…Fragoso manages to tell a disturbing story beautifully, leading readers into the secret world she inhabited for decades and even inspiring a modicum of sympathy for the man who manipulated and abused her.
—The Washington Post

Lisa Bonos

It's testimony to Fragoso's narrative abilities that she can render both her own and Curran's points of view convincingly, as different…Written without self-pity, rancor or even judgment, Tiger, Tiger forces readers to experience Curran simultaneously as the object of a little girl's love and fascination and as a calculating sex offender who cultivates her dependence on him while contriving to separate her from anyone who might prevent his molesting her. Balanced uncomfortably between these antipodes, Tiger, Tiger is the portrait of a man who will disgust and alienate readers by a writer too honest to repudiate her love for him.
—The New York Times

Kathryn Harrison

Disquieting memoir about the 15-year relationship between a child and a predatory sexagenarian.

Fragoso's New Jersey childhood consisted of sharing a bed in a slummy, cramped one-bedroom apartment with her mentally ill mother and hard-drinking, Army-veteran father, who worked as a jeweler. She was just seven when she met 51-year-old pedophile Peter Curran at a public pool in 1985 and subsequently invited to his home. Hopelessly unaware of the inappropriateness of the arrangement, her naive mother joined her daughter on a series of visits to Curran's expansive house—an interactive, wide-eyed wonderland alive with his two young sons and a vast array of kid-friendly pets. A perfect escape from her family life, Fragoso's chaperoned (then solo) visits became more frequent as Curran drew closer and more physically daring. At first, he'd discreetly hug and kiss her in the basement, then coerced her into clumsy, manipulative sexual advances, labeling his actions as "something that people in love, like we are, do together." Eventually, Fragoso's perceptive father forbade her from visiting Curran, who continued to take in a random series of female foster children. But the carefree whimsy of the author's childhood had already fallen victim to Curran's premeditated manipulation. After reuniting with him two years later (as her mother's sanity deteriorated), Fragoso became withdrawn, increasingly codependent and cooperative during their sex games. In wincingly frank, graphic scenes, the author intricately details her harrowing evolution from a doe-eyed innocent girl to a broken, emotionally scarred victim who, at 22, was further crushed after receiving Curran's 10 handwritten suicide notes along with the key to his car. Culled from the four diaries she kept during the ordeal, Fragoso writes with searing honesty about her serpentine entanglement and of Curran's calculated, menacing exploitation of her. Intensive psychotherapy and new motherhood provide a hopeful coda to her unspeakable experience.

A gripping, tragic and unforgettable chronicle of lost innocence and abuse.

Kirkus Reviews