Praise for She's Such a Liar
“In this bold and informative manifesto, Susan Osborn argues that incest is not merely a private family tragedy or a rare psychological aberration. It is a deeply embedded system of power—sustained by institutional complicity and the strategic discrediting of those who speak. Osborn exposes how Western social structures, particularly the medical establishment, rush to contain it. The result is a powerful machinery of disbelief that preserves hierarchy and suppresses knowledge. Clear-eyed and incisive, She’s Such a Liar reframes incest as a problem of knowledge and power—and calls for a collective reckoning with the systems that make truth dangerous.”
“Meticulously researched and thoughtfully written, She’s Such a Liar provides a vital and illuminating examination of how incest has been silenced across literature, medicine, and culture. Essential reading for feminists, clinicians, researchers, and advocates working in trauma and abuse recovery.”
“Dr. Osborn’s cogent manifesto brings incest into sharp analytical focus, challenging its confinement to the private “family” sphere. Reframing incest as a pervasive social phenomenon with institutional roots, she traces how disbelief is produced and sustained. This urgent book offers a stark and necessary rethinking of the structures that normalize harm and make it so difficult to name.”
“She’s Such a Liar is the phrase too many survivors hear when they tell the truth. Susan Osborn confronts the silence around incest and the systems that have helped keep it hidden.”
“Susan Osborn brings admirable clarity and insight to the topic of incest, demanding that readers confront its pervasiveness and harm, while equipping them with context and insight to do so. She’s Such a Liar is both a history of how incest has been hiding in plain sight in texts from the ancient world to Freud and contemporary medicine and a manifesto for ending the interlocking systems that enable it.”
“She’s Such a Liar is a seismic indictment of the powerful cultural, medical, and political systems that have kept incest hidden for centuries. Brave, incisive, and grounded in extensive research, Susan Osborn, Ph.D., names the truth most institutions refuse to confront, tearing the veil off a hidden epidemic and demanding we finally face what so many endure behind closed doors. Long overdue, this is an unflinching call to confront the entrenched systems that protect abusers and silence survivors.”
“Osborn shows us in a beautifully written, concise volume that sexual violence against women, including incest, will never be solved until we lift the veil on the systems that support it. She invites us to rebuild a new culture that supports the equality of all, and disavows such violence completely and once and for all.”
“Susan Osborn is an unstoppable force. Her latest book, She’s Such a Liar, is a bold analysis of the systems that use sexual violence to oppress and subordinate women. I hope this work will be adopted by women’s studies and gender studies departments globally.”
“Susan Osborn’s She’s Such a Liar: Incest, Knowledge, and Power is a compelling indictment of a culture that erases incest from discussions of sexual violence, thereby obscuring male responsibility. While its subtitle, “A Manifesto,” signals a strong and urgent argument, it is precisely Osborn’s rigorous archival scholarship that gives that argument its authority. Written with clarity and accessibility, the book traces how institutions such as law, medicine, and psychiatry have been complicit in sustaining incest as “an inevitable outgrowth of patriarchal culture,” while cultural narratives—from the story of Dinah to centuries of male-authored commentary—have concealed incest and displaced blame onto women’s supposed bodily weaknesses. Echoing Linda T. Sanford’s observation that the offender “is a mirror of our culture,” Osborn demonstrates that despite feminist progress, incest persists as a pervasive yet systematically concealed reality at the heart of contemporary culture.”
“A tour de force. Osborn’s book exposes the medical suppression of incest and the institutional forces that have sustained it for centuries. Meticulously researched and elegantly argued, this book confronts the politics of trauma and shame, dismantles the myth of medical neutrality, and calls for a cultural reckoning. This book could not be more timely.”
“She’s Such a Liar is a powerful feminist tract that reveals the underlying hypocrisy and corruption of traditional approaches to the subject of incest. …uses both force and care to hammer out its argument that patriarchy is a rotten system that causes harm to girls and women. It accesses the language of women’s studies ideology in an approachable way and includes well-placed doses of humor….”
“Reading She’s Such a Liar will make you furious. And then it will make you an activist. Susan Osborn’s manifesto peels back centuries of male supremacist rhetorical and juridical strategies that have ever so conveniently invisibilized the father’s role in perpetrating incest. Persuasively arguing that incest is not the medical problem of wayward girls but a systemic form of gender oppression, Osborn gives us the tools to dismantle the dominant discourses that continue to protect perpetrators at the expense of girls’ human dignity.”
“Osborn’s compelling account of the historical, cultural silencing around incest and the shaming of girls and women demands attention. She skillfully traces the roots of the public’s denial of incest and other forms of sexual violence, illuminating the role of institutions and broader social structures in sustaining the silence and attempting to control girls’ and women’s bodies. While acknowledging signs of progress in how we address gender-based sexual violence, Osborn demonstrates how the misogynous roots of incest, including patriarchal power and control, remain deeply embedded in our current context. She importantly frames sexual violence as matter of social justice, calling for urgent collective action at multiple levels and offering a roadmap for next steps.”
Praise for Surviving the Wreck
“In this finely crafted novel, Osborn depicts complex emotional and political territory…a strong and compelling book.”
“A testimony to the power of truth and disclosure over secrecy.”
“…quite simply, a work of genius. Never before have the intricacies of family bonds been so honestly and so compellingly rendered.”
“Surviving the Wreck is a chilling novel about the silences in ‘normal’ families, the pain behind those silences, and the need to turn silence into speech.”
“Surviving the Wreck potently portrays…the divided alliances of the family set against the political tragedy of the Kennedy assassination. Beautifully written descriptions rivet the reader’s attention. . . A story…of survival and new beginnings.”
“Osborn writes with vivid imagery and a fine literary hand.”
Praise for Elizabeth Bowen: New Critical Perspectives
“A splendid volume and an impressive contribution to the scholarship on Elizabeth Bowen … that will no doubt keep critics fascinated for years to come.”
“A very highly recommended addition to literary studies collections.”
“Osborn … advance[s] a series of sophisticated claims about mimesis … an impressive contribution.”
“Well-moderated [and] dangerously intellectual … a tour de force.”
“A serious and well-informed work… that anyone writing about the author will want to know.”