Blurb on the back:
Scottish journalist Meg Henderson grew up in Glasgow during the fifties and sixties as part of a large and often troubled family. The tenement block in which they lived collapsed and they were moved to the notorious Blackhill district, where religious sectarianism, gang warfare and struggles with hostile bureaucrats were part of the daily life for the people. Meg was born into a mixed-religion family, where there was warmth and laughter as well as conflict. She had a close relationship with her mother, Nan, and her mother's sister, Meg's Aunt Peggy, two idealistic emotional women who took on the troubles of the world. Together they shaped Meg's life, shielded her from the effects of her father's heavy drinking and helped her to move on, eventually, from the slums of Glasgow.

A hopless romantic, Peggy searched for a husband until late in her life and then endured a harsh, unhappy marriage until she died tragically in childbirth. Her death devastated the family and destroyed Meg's childhood, but it was only as an adult, after the death of her own mother, that Meg was able to discover the shocking facts behind Peggy's untimely demise.

This is a fantastic book and piece of social history. There must be few generations left in Glasgow that have first term memories of the old fashioned tenements and 'slums'. As Henderson points out, Glasgow Council showed the rest of Britain how not to solve slum problems.

This book also reminds me of my mum and the family background she came from. At family gatherings, she remembers hiding in the corner to avoid standing up and singing. As did Meg's family, and countless other families of the time, many people had their 'signature song'. Sadly, Meg's Aunt Peggy's song would become tainted with sad memories.

This book is about how one woman's death shattered a family and caused ripples throughout them which last many years. Meg doesn't discover the true identity of Peggy's death from childbirth until she is in her 40s and her own mother, Peggy's sister, is dead.

This book is being made into a bookring.
Rules:
1) Make a journal entry when you receive the book and when you have finished it. That way we know the book has arrived safely and what you thought of it.
2) PM the next person on their list for their address. Give them a reasonable amount of time to response (i.e. 2 weeks) then PM the next person on the list. Let me know as well.
3) Post the book of to the next person. Easy peasey!

List of participants:
calalilly -UK
clairemagnolia - UK
Drutt - UK

Finished!

I tend to keep bookrings/rays open so this list may change according to participant's shipping preferences.

And we're off! I sent this book to calalilly via second class post today. Enjoy :-)

Received in the post yesterday. I've a few other rings ahead of this but i should get quite a bit of reading time in over the next couple of weeks and I intend to really hit my tbr mountain. Here's to it!!!

An insight into Glasgow life in the fifties, good book. Sending off to clairemagnolia now

Arrived safely today. There are a couple of bookrings in the queue ahead of this one, but I'm becoming a much faster reader since joining Bookcrossing!

Thanks, Calalilly.

This book filled in a lot of gaps for me. I was a student in Glasgow and lived for a short while in Ruchazie, infamous for the "ice cream wars" and not far from Blackhill, but at the time I knew little of its history. I was also at school in Edinburgh with Meg Henderson's daughter, Debbie.

A tragic but fascinating story. Thanks for sharing this, Drusillamac.

Ready now to post to Drutt, fittingly in Newton Mearns.

Judging from the postmark, this book's been on a little mystery tour, courtesy of Royal Mail. It's safely here though, and I'll get started on it straightaway.

Most of this book was a fascinating account of life for the working classes in Glasgow in the 50s and 60s - that people were treated so poorly so recently in Scotland's history is appalling and depressing.

Sadly, Meg Henderson just seemed to lose interest. The big retrospective revelation toward the end didn't turn out to be that big since she'd given away most of what happened when she wrote about the period (perhaps she decided it wouldn't make sense without it). If it was meant to be about Peggy's life, why not leave it as that? Henderson seemed so determined to describe the circumstances of how she found out the details in the 90s that we got 25 years of random filler.

If Henderson had used it to describe her achievements against the odds following the collapse of working class family life, that would have made some sense. But we get no explanation of how she became a writer or how her and her husband ended up together - it was just confirmed at the end that this is what had happened, with nothing between going away to do VSO and the phone call from the hospital. So why the inclusion about how much she enjoyed writing while at school or how she couldn't help thinking about Rab?

Anyway, it was a nice idea and an interesting read in many places, but I couldn't help but feel that this was a book in which half of the pages had been randomly torn out.

Now on its way to orange-platypus.

Arrived in the post today from Drutt. Looking forward to reading it. Many Thanks!

I really got into this book and read it in a few days, on the bus to work, during lunchbreaks, late into the night when I should have been going to sleep. I found the first half about life in the 50s more interesting, but I enjoyed it all. I felt that there were places where it needed some more careful editing, but it didn''t matter: the content was more important than the style.

Sending this book off to PussinBooks just as soon as my partner has finished reading it!

Posted off to PussinBooks yesterday. Sorry for the delay. We're moving house at the moment and everything is a bit chaotic....

Received in the post today, looking forward to reading. Not sure who is after me on the ring so can someone let me know? thanks.

Enjoyed this a lot and found the illustration of Glasgow in the 50s fascinating. However I do agree with previous entries that it is not very evenly written, and goes into lots of detail about seemingly irrelevant things, but leaves out parts you really want to know more about, such as how her career developed or how she got together with her husband. Also the supposed 'twist' at the end isn't really that much of a surprise. Nevertheless, you find yourself always wanting to read on and I would recommend it as a nice easy read to lose yourself in.