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    The Girl: A Life Lived in the Shadow of Roman Polanski
    The Girl: A Life Lived in the Shadow of Roman Polanski
    The Girl: A Life Lived in the Shadow of Roman Polanski
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Girl: A Life Lived in the Shadow of Roman Polanski

    Written by Samantha Geimer

    Narrated by Samantha Geimer

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In this memoir that “might be the most important and valuable book of the century so far” (The Guardian), Samantha Geimer reveals for the first time her side of one of the most notorious and complex legal cases in American history.

    March 1977, Southern California. Roman Polanski drives a rented Mercedes along Mulholland Drive to Jack Nicholson’s house. Sitting next to him is an aspiring model named Samantha Geimer. She is thirteen years old.

    The undisputed facts of what happened in the hours that followed appear in the court record: Roman and Samantha spent hours taking pictures—on a kitchen counter, topless in a Jacuzzi. Wine and Quaaludes were consumed, balance and innocence were lost, and a young girl’s life was altered forever—eternally cast as a background player in her own story.

    For months on end, the Polanski case dominated the media both in the United States and abroad. But even with the extensive coverage, there is much about that day—and the girl at the center of it all—that has remained a mystery. The few times Samantha Geimer has spoken publically, it has been largely in reaction to Polanski—his latest film, his arrests, his releases. Virtually the entire narrative of Samantha’s life, and even the details of the rape itself, have all been left untold.

    Taking us far beyond the known headlines, this is the story of a girl who was simultaneously wise beyond her years and yet terribly vulnerable and even naive. Says New York Times bestselling author Sheila Weller, “Witty, snarky—but also precise and thoughtfully observant…Samantha Geimer is a reflective guide as she humanely tells of a complex violation that hurt but didn’t defeat her.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateSep 17, 2013
    ISBN9781442362987
    The Girl: A Life Lived in the Shadow of Roman Polanski
    Author

    Samantha Geimer

    Samantha Geimer is married and has three sons. She divides her time between Hawaii and Nevada.

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    Reviews for The Girl

    3.5/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Samantha's perspective is so different from what I expected it to be. Here is a portrait of a woman who is fed up and who refuses to define her life by the most awful thing that happen to her. She's had many years to process and I hope every single victim of rape can get to their own version of the mindset she has. She seems like a person who is a different sort of advocate for victims of rape and it was a version I actually ended up finding very cathartic and insightful. I can see how certain parts of her perspective may not be for everyone.

      CW:Discusses Rape, Institutional Sexism, Misogyny, some self harm and drug abuse. F-Slur used in a quote at one point.
    • 3/5
      An interview with Geimer in The Guardian and a review in The Observer by Victoria Coren made me buy this book. What Geimer has to say about the nature of 'victimhood' and the media's need for victims who feed the public's desire for stories of misery that make their own lives seem better is, to me, important. Geimer repeatedly makes the point that she is a survivor, not a victim, of Polanski's crime. It is tragic that Western society is incapable of celebrating that, and prefers to cast doubt on the character of rape survivors by implying that they must be sluts because they haven't allowed the crime to cripple them. Geimer is eloquent about this. Understandably, she comes across as angry at times, and occasionally the narrative flow suffers because of the repetition of complaints. The third section of the book felt like it was going round in circles at times, and threw up some contradictory attitudes. But I haven't been raped, so can't possibly know what it's like to reconstruct your life and deal with the aftermath of violation like that. I can understand Geimer's wish to be free of the story and not be framed as a victim every time Polanski is in the news, but I agree more strongly with the argument by Jaclyn Friedman quoted in the book that "Rape is a crime against the social fabric that binds all of us together... when the perpetrator goes unpunished, it makes all of us less safe."
    • 4/5
      Some tabloid stories/legal cases refuse to die. In 1977, celebrated movie director Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl. He took a plea deal on a lesser charge, and served a short prison sentence. After that, it gets complicated, but the short version is this: faced with the threat of additional prison time, Polanski fled to France, where he has lived ever since. He's not quite in exile, since he is a French citizen, but he has been unable to return to Hollywood, The case has been polarizing because Polanski is a famous director with a tragic past, and his artistic expression has been hampered by his inability to work in the United States. Some figure that "the girl" in the story must have brought the rape on herself, or that her mother must have led her own daughter to the casting couch."The girl," Samantha Geimer, is over 50 now. After all these years, she finally tells her own story in this memoir. Her whole life has been affected by that one criminal event, but, other than that, there really isn't that much to tell. After years of hiding from reporters and numbing herself by using drugs, she got herself together. Now she has a good life with a happy marriage and children. So why should she go public now? She doesn't say this explicitly, but I think her purpose is to exonerate her now-elderly mother. Geimer claims that it never occurred to her mother that Polanski could have a sexual interest in an only slightly developed thirteen-year old girl. That's why her mother let Geimer go to Jack Nicholson's house alone for a "photo shoot" with a much-older man. Geimer also wants the world to know that she, too, would like Polanski allowed back into the U.S, not that she ever wants to see him again.The Girl has a lot of white space, a sure sign that it probably should have been a long-form magazine article instead of a book. It's a quick read, and Geimer emerges as a likable, sympathetic character. Polanski is depicted not so much as evil but as arrogant and selfish. The reader is left with the impression that Polanski was attracted to youth, and had no particular passion for Geimer--any girl could have served his purpose. For two people whose fates have been intertwined for over thirty years, the extent to which Polanski and Geimer remain strangers to each other is remarkable.