miggyfool's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0


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kiwichill's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This biography is extremely well written.   Sandra Pankhurst endured a traumatic and abusive childhood.   She had an extraordinary life, as a transgender woman who survived many dangerous and heartbreakin  situations. She treats the clients of her trauma cleaning business with empathy and compassion.

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emillyrw's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

2.0

I started reading this thinking it would be about the trauma cleaning but it is almost entirely the biography of Sandra who owns a trauma cleaning business with only a few stories of the cleaning interspersed between her life story.

Please read the trigger warnings before diving in to this.

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erica_reads_things's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

This was my second read of The Trauma Cleaner within a couple of years. I really loved the audiobook format of this time around - it allowed me to really emerse myself into Sandra's world. What an incredible woman and story. It was interesting to hear the perspective of an older trans woman who transitioned later in life. Her story and what she has turned her life into and for other people is truly incredible. 

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loosetoothfool's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

3.5

what an interesting person and a well done capturing of a life. sandra is surprising and very resilient and brave but not a perfect person, and not someone who conforms to a stereotype, that would not be in her nature. it is interesting with biographies to read about a real life person because they do end up feeling a bit unreal and fictional, but it is important to remember that Sandra is a real life person. it is clear that the writer loves Sandra, and there even exists bias in that. there is a feeling of reality and imagined reality, truth and misremeberings, different perspectives and experiences, layered into Sandra's story, naturally because of her memory issues, which makes for an unstable telling of real life, but one that is still shocking, amazing, interesting and so sad. this book, and Sandra's life, has a lot of horrible traumatic moments and therefore readers should read with caution. i think that some of the present day cleaning chapters were repetitive and I found myself wanting to get back to Sandra's life narrative.

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