Published by Mardle on April 27, 2023
Format: eARC
Source: Net Galley
Pages: 250
Goodreads
Also by this author: The Lion Tamer Who Lost, Call Me Star Girl, Nothing Else
My mother once said to me, ‘I wish you could feel the way I do for eighteen seconds. Just eighteen seconds, so you’d know how awful it is.’
I thought about it. Realised we could all learn from being in another person’s head for eighteen seconds. Eighteen seconds inside Grandma Roberts’ head as she sat alone with her evening cup of tea, us girls upstairs in bed. Eighteen seconds inside one-year-old Colin’s head when he woke up in a foster home without his family. Eighteen seconds inside the head of a girl waiting for her bedroom door to open.
Writer, Louise Beech, looks back on the events that led to the day her mother wrote down her last words, then jumped off the Humber Bridge. She missed witnessing the horror herself by minutes.
Louise recounts the pain and trauma of her childhood alongside her love for her siblings with a delicious dark humour and a profound voice of hope for the future.
HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY LOUISE!!!!!!!
I have literally devoured this book over the course of a couple of days. It was one I was obsessing about when I wasn’t reading. But the difference is, it’s a memoir. (The audiobook is called Daffodils) this memoir also I knew this would be amazingly special because it is written by a woman who destroyed me with her book The Lion Tamer Who Lost.
It’s never easy to review a memoir because you can’t really comment on what aspects of the book you liked, the characters, or the plot. Here we have Louise’s thoughts and feelings on everything that she has laid bare.
Also, when reading you know that the author doesn’t want sympathy for their life, they don’t need your validation from it either. They bare their soul and they are inviting you to a small slice of their life that they want to share. Instead, I felt validated, I’ve been through a small portion of what Louise has and her book made me feel that my feelings and thoughts are my own to have. I own that, I own my life.
Writing this, you can tell has been cathartic, and reading the update from 2021 I kinda cheered, and most definitely smiled. I told Louise this book should have been called How to be Brave if she hasn’t already used that title. Because what she has done since is incredibly brave and she owns it.
My heart does go out to Louise and her family. But what I loved the most about the book is the Whatsapp group she has with her family. They are her true family, she’s the matriarch and the love they have for each other is something I could only dream of from my family. My relationship with my mum is now borne of a friendship and no one understands it. I’ve had things said to me that I treat my mum wrongly, and I shouldn’t speak to her the way I do, but her response, I do the same to her. She shrugs and walks off. But reading their WhatsApp and glimmering into their privacy, made me smile. Because of the way they are, is the same as my mum and I. I loved the fondness behind the jokes, the love, and the compassion.
This book resonates with me and I can’t thank Louise enough for being brave and sharing her story. It is a powerful story of having to grow up, way way WAY too quickly, and having the strength to carry on. In the most fabulous way, she always does.
It will stay with me and remind me that it will be ok.
Until the next time xxx
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
Stay and have a chat :)