September 1, 2023
A freelance journalist explores how a 30-year scientific study in which she became involuntarily involved has impacted her life. Breslin's participation in the Block Project, a psychology experiment that aimed to predict the adult identities of its child subjects, began shortly after she was born in 1968. Just after her birth, her professor father enrolled her in a child-care program that doubled as a laboratory for researchers. Four years later, the author attended a preschool where investigators studied children from a hidden observation gallery and routinely probed teachers for insights. Breslin's memories of being constantly observed during school hours contrasted with those she had of feeling "invisible" in a family that eventually broke apart. She remarks that the study made her feel "seen" and "special," though it did little to assuage the turbulence that marked her adolescence. The author began her post-collegiate journalistic career by writing about the sex entertainment scene in San Francisco. From observed subject, she became "the voyeur," which was "intoxicating." She also lived in Los Angeles, where she wrote about the pornography industry, and New Orleans, where she became a freelance writer. Her marriage to an unexpectedly abusive man and a battle with breast cancer infused Breslin with the desire to investigate the Block Project and finally become "a serious journalist." When divorce freed her to return to California, she restarted her career with a journalism fellowship. For all she uncovered about the project and its creators, her most significant discovery was personal. The experiment that had used her often painful life experiences in the pursuit of enlightenment had discarded all the information it gathered about and from her "like so much trash." As she examines the dark side of experimentation on human subjects, Breslin also asks disturbing questions about the consequences modern data-gathering will have on future generations. An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 1, 2023
Shortly after her birth, Breslin was enrolled in the Block Study at the University of California, Berkeley, a 30-year study of human development. Having spent the first half of her life under this surveillance, Breslin grew up knowing herself to be a ""human lab rat."" In this vulnerable memoir, Breslin goes over the course of her life and the obstacles the Block Study could neither predict nor prepare her for: her parents' divorce, her battle with depression, a meandering career. While Breslin has worked as an investigative reporter for a significant chunk of her life, her inquiry into the Block Study could be more developed. The author admits frequently that being a study participant was not a particularly important fact for most of her life, and this is mirrored in her narrated research: she poses general questions about the nature of psychology and comes to no new insights. Breslin places her writing within a lineage of scientific understanding, but readers will find that the Block Study is a quirky detail in an otherwise broadly pleasing memoir.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from November 13, 2023
Journalist Breslin’s fascinating debut memoir tackles the fallout from her enrollment in a psychological experiment as a child. Born in 1968 in Berkeley, Calif., to a poetry professor father and English instructor mother, Breslin sensed her mother’s resentment early on: “Instead of getting her Ph.D., my mother had gotten married... then she got pregnant... and as her career floundered, my father’s flourished.” To increase her own free time, Breslin’s mother enrolled a four-year-old Breslin in the Block Project at UC Berkeley, an experiment in which she “would be studied for the next 30 years in a groundbreaking psychological experiment that would predict who would grow up to be.” What began as a preschool with specific, data-collecting criteria gave way to regular psychological evaluations through one-way mirrors and home monitoring via parental reports—all agreed upon before Breslin could even conceptualize “consent.” At 15, Breslin began to numb her adolescent emotional pain with drinking, drugs, and sex, the latter of which became the focus of her career as a journalist covering the porn industry. By the time she hit middle age and found herself stuck in an abusive marriage, Breslin began to reflect on the Block Project’s impact on her trajectory. Unpicking thorny questions about determinism and the ethics of human experimentation, Breslin attacks her subject with verve and wit, resisting woe-is-me solipsism without defanging her critiques of the study that rocked her life. It’s gripping stuff. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA.