The Girl
A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski
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4.7 • 19 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In this searing and surprising memoir, Samantha Geimer, "the girl" at the center of the infamous Roman Polanski sexual assault case, breaks a virtual thirty-five-year silence to tell her story and reflect on the events of that day and their lifelong repercussions.
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 actress, Samantha Geimer, recently arrived from York, Pennsylvania. She is thirteen years old.
The undisputed facts of what happened in the following hours appear in the court record: Polanski spent hours taking pictures of Samantha on a deck overlooking the Hollywood Hills, 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 in the US and abroad. But even with the extensive coverage, much about that day and the girl at the center of it all remains a mystery. Just about everyone had an opinion about the renowned director and the girl he was accused of drugging and raping. Who was the predator? Who was the prey? Was the girl an innocent victim or a cunning Lolita artfully directed by her ambitious stage mother? How could the criminal justice system have failed all the parties concerned in such a spectacular fashion? Once Polanski fled the country, what became of Samantha, the young girl forever associated with one of Hollywood's most notorious episodes? Samantha, as much as Polanski, has been a fugitive since the events of that night more than thirty years ago.
Taking us far beyond the headlines, The Girl reveals a thirteen-year-old who was simultaneously wise beyond her years and yet terribly vulnerable. By telling her story in full for the first time, Samantha reclaims her identity, and indelibly proves that it is possible to move forward from victim to survivor, from confusion to certainty, from shame to strength.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Over thirty years after she had sexual relations with Roman Polanski as a thirteen-year-old, Samantha Geimer finally releases her tell-all memoir, an astonishingly well-written, engaging book that is admirably subtle in its depiction of events. In 1977, when she met Polanski, Geimer was, by her own description, a "thirteen-year-old kid in jeans and sneakers, barely developed," living with her mother and her stepfather in the San Fernando Valley and half-heartedly pursuing an acting career. Polanski, a friend of a friend of Geimer's older sister, came to her house to take some tests shots for a Vogue Paris story "on the differences between American girls and French girls," which the magazine later denied it had commissioned. Then came the photo-shoot, which famously took place at Jack Nicholson's house. Geimer recalls the events that took place with explicit yet straight-forward detail. Her prose is lucid and compelling. The memoir, which winds its way through the painful vilification of her mother by the press, and a spectacular failure of the legal system, is masterfully clear-eyed. Headhunters on My Doorstep: A True Treasure Island Ghost StoryJ. Maarten TroostGotham, $26 (304p) Newly sober travel writer Troost retraces Robert Louis Stevenson's route through the South Pacific from the Marquesas to Samoa in this evocative, funny literary memoir. He recounts his voyage upon the Aranui III cargo ship rooming with a seasick "family of cheerful gnomes from Lyon," battling the urge for a drink and acquiring a traditional Marquesan tattoo on the anniversary of his sobriety. Troost provides insight into addiction and recovery that, in his case, turned him from alcoholic to longdistance runner, and from Buddhism to the Catholic Church. We learn the history of the islands and view the beautiful landscapes of lagoons, atolls, and beaches through Troost's vibrant descriptions. Troost muses on quotes from Stevenson's In the South Seas, such as his thoughts on cannibalism, "to eat a man's flesh after he is dead is far less hateful than to oppress him whilst he lives." He also discusses other literary works about the South Pacific including Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's Back to Nature and Herman Melville's Typee. Troost is an excellent travel narrator, clever, bold, and full of captivating visual details. His personal story of recovery is also powerfully told and will surely resonate with many readers.
Customer Reviews
Very good book
Very well written story of events and results and continuing saga after the arrest of RP in 1977. After reading the book I watched "Wanted and Desired" on Netflix. It angers and saddens me that we still have judges that can do whatever they want for their own personal gain at the detriment of victim and accused. What Polanski did was a crime but all parties agreed to the plea and what was to be his sentence so everyone could move on, especially "the girl". What the judge decided to do changed lives forever and not in a good way.
I'm happy that Samantha is in a good enough place to finally write about her ordeal.
I highly recommend this book!