Her experiences of a cycle of alcoholism, poverty and domestic abuse perpetuated through generations can be at times a difficult and un-nerving read. I recently found Kerry Hudson on Twitter and I am delighted to see that she is on maternity leave, so she must know now that she can love and nurture her own child.Ī raw and incredibly honest memoir of a life lived at the edges of society, this is Kerry’s recollection of growing up with a young single mother and a string of unsuitable father figures and influences. She then followed it up with a chapter where she re-visited the place, sometimes finding the actual house or flat, and speaking to locals about the current state of the community. I liked how Kerry tackled each location, telling the story of that particular time in her life.
It was comforting to hear how she found escape in libraries and books, and I wonder if that was the motivation that spurred her on to escape the kind of life she was leading and to find a better one.
Kerry clearly questioned her own ability to be able to love and nurture another human being after her own experiences.
Not her mother, the boyfriends, or the many teachers in all the different schools Kerry attended (apart from those at Hetton-le-Hole who seemed to recognise that something was very wrong. I felt angry that no one seemed to take responsibility for her safety and well being. All very different to Kerry's experience. I grew up in a poor household but there was plenty of love and food, and I felt wanted. It made for uncomfortable reading and I found myself comparing my own childhood with Kerry's. I cannot resist a book with a map and this one was fascinating with some place names in bold typeface (these were the towns that she lived in throughout her childhood) and dotted lines with arrows which I discovered were the routes she and her mother travelled, either to escape from or to join one of her mother's boyfriends. The first thing I noticed on opening this book was the map, four pages in.
This is a memoir of a girl growing up in acute poverty who revisits the many locations that she lived in throughout her childhood and views them from a new perspective.
0 kommentar(er)
