Blurb from Amazon:  From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through adolescence, leaving herself teetering on the brink of the 1960's, Lorna Sage vividly and wittily brings to life a vanished time and place and illuminates the lives of three generations of women.

Lorna Sage’s memoir of childhood and adolescence is a brilliantly written bravura piece of work, which vividly and wickedly brings to life her eccentric family and somewhat bizarre upbringing in the small town of Hanmer, on the border between Wales and Shropshire.

I have to say, I wasn't overly impressed with this one, it was just an ok read!  My main gripe being that, Sage didn't really have anything new or different to say about the time period, that hasn't already been written about countless times, and to be honest, I didn't find her life particularly exceptional enough to be worth reading about either!  It was all a little "heard it all before".  Which is a shame, cos right at the very end it did redeem itself!

I was far more interested in her continuing with her exams, just days after giving birth, and then being seperated from her daughter whilst she carried on with her university studies to make sure she gave her a better life than she had!  You can tell from a comment made about how her daughter was more her parents child than hers, that she was upset that she wasn't there more in those early years, and I would have been far more interested in reading the story of those years than her childhood, rather than that just being squeezed into a short chapter at the end!

If she ever writes a follow up about those years, I shall eagerly devour it I'm sure!

Nat

I've got this on my TBR somewhere.  Thanks for the review Nat.

I gave up on this one, many moons ago now.

Gave up on it a long time ago too, can,t remember why.

I gave up on it too, years ago.  Just couldn't get into it.

natsplatt:

If she ever writes a follow up about those years, I shall eagerly devour it I'm sure!

Sadly, she won't, Nat, as she died very young.

janetandjohn:

natsplatt:

If she ever writes a follow up about those years, I shall eagerly devour it I'm sure!

 

 

Sadly, she won't, Nat, as she died very young.

Oh, I didn't know that, what a shame!  I would've loved to have read about her uni years and beyond!

Nat

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/09/lorna-sage-bad-blood

Here's an article by Lorna Sage's daughter.

Luci

I am so much in the minority on this one as I enjoyed it!  As I've said elsewhere Hanmer and other places mentioned in the book are fairly local and because of this my reading group chose to read it before I received it on the book circle. We found lots to discuss about the book and felt that she left a lot unsaid about her relationship with her grandfather who, although a Reverend, was not a very nice man.

Thanks for that article, it was interesting!

Nat

elkiedee:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/09/lorna-sage-bad-blood

Here's an article by Lorna Sage's daughter.

Luci

Luci - thank you for that article which I never saw at the time....... something new in there for me, as I don't recall Angela Carter being mentioned in Sage's book.  So for all the pitfalls of being born from an early pregnancy, being half brought up by grandparents, her daughter has found out that she was much loved, her Mum and grandmum wrote to each other all the time, her mother was bonkers but loved her..... Sage's daughter has lovely memories of her Mum, and has turned out a lovely human being herself!

wyres:

I've got this on my TBR somewhere.  Thanks for the review Nat.

Me too - I'll definitely look it out soon though!

I can't even remember now why I gave up on it.  It's the kind of book I usually really enjoy.  Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it.  I've always intended to give it another try one day.

 I read this in 2001!  We were living in Germany and I had read and re read and re re read all my books and they were hard to get hold of because the Naafi, for some reason, didn't sell many or a great variety and at that time the internet wasn't as popular - or at any rate we didn't know about Amazon and had only just been hooked up to the internet anyway - so browsing the Naafi's ONE revolving stand of books this was the only book that looked half way interesting and I remember perusing it on the ferry home.  I didn't find it that enthralling or different, but like you I was interested in the fact that she'd fallen pregnant and was so ignorant as to how it had happened and then to have her family take over the upbringing of her daughter - though that went on a lot - but really she didn't do anything special, did she?  Her situation wasn't that unusual although certainly eccentric. And that's about all there is to say on it.....

 What a fab interview - I think a second book would have been much more interesting!  And now I kind of want to read it again, now I know more background!