When Sydney Smith was nine, she thought about killing herself because of her mother's cruelty.
When she reached puberty, her mother sexually assaulted her - a pattern repeated over the years.
By the time Sydney was twenty, she believed there were cameras behind every mirror in the house, that her mother could read her mind, that anybody who looked at her could see the bloody fantasies of murder and mutilation which tormented her.
How to escape? How to survive?
Enthralling and disturbing, brave and elegantly written, The Lost Woman is that rare memoir: a story which, once read, will never be forgotten.