Journal Entry 1 by seethroughfaith from Turku, Varsinais-Suomi Finland on Friday, October 03, 2008

I usually buy books secondhand if I can and this one is no exception. I saw it for £2.50 in one charity shop, and resisted (£2 is my usual limit) but then the same day saw it in another (Cancer Research) for £2 ...

Doris Lessing
'This could have been the saddest book you have ever read, but because of Lorna Sage's relish in the details, her exuberant celebration of the vitality of this clever, surviving girl, it is as enjoyable a book as I remember reading.'


Synopsis
From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through her adolescence, leaving herself teetering on the brink of the 1960s, Lorna Sage 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 brings to life her eccentric family and somewhat bizarre upbringing in the small town of Hanmer, on the border between Wales and Shropshire. The period as well as the place is evoked with crystal clarity: from the 1940s, dominated for Lorna by her dissolute but charismatic vicar grandfather, through the 1950s, where the invention of fish fingers revolutionised the lives of housewives like Lorna's mother, to the brink of the 1960s, where the community was shocked by Lorna's pregnancy at 16, an event which her grandmother blamed on "the fiendish invention of sex".
 

Journal Entry 2 by seethroughfaith from Turku, Varsinais-Suomi Finland on Sunday, January 11, 2009

Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Biography

Started reading this last night (read up to page 60) ... Doris lessing wrote that this was a sad book, and I concur. Both the grandmother and the grandfather are really sad, lost souls. But it is riviting reading. 

Journal Entry 3 by seethroughfaith from Turku, Varsinais-Suomi Finland on Monday, January 12, 2009

The second half of this book is far better than the first half. That's because it's more about Lorna (my namesake!) herself - and how she defied the odds in a very patriarchial and sexist (and status obsessed)in post-war England. I loved the scenes from the 50s the best - and can only imagine what it was like to have been a schoolgirl then when all the rules were changing!

The first half wasn't so good and I confess almost quit a couple of times.

The style is a bit boring at times (biographies of one's own family probably aren't that easy to put onto paper!). I think the book would have benefited from having a small map - showing where Hanmer is in relation to Whitchurch and Chester etc. The photos were great. I especially liked the one on page 218. Lorna Sage was a stunner! And the one on p.277 speaks for itself.

The grandfather is a very interesting (and formidible character) and what was portrayed well was the whole concept of tide-cottages (or properties as in the vicarage - when the vicar becomes ill or dies the family loses its home!)

I'm reserving this for now (for the winners' bag should it do a second round)