I’m going to be a bit behind, I think, with my challenge of reading 50 memoirs in a year. I haven’t been able to read about real life for a little while, for obvious reasons. I’m hoping to get back to the memoirs again, when I feel able to, as I would like to continue with this. I started On Chapel Sands by Laura Cummings and am enjoying it so far, but have had to break off from it and start reading a gorgeous rom com instead, Sunrise at Butterfly Cove, by my friend Sarah Bennett. I’m hoping to get back to On Chapel Sands when I feel ready!
This morning I’ve done a very surreal waltz-like Aldi shop, with my trolley, keeping that safe distance from everybody (although it was very quiet in there) – and with a pair of winter gloves on and my hair up, so it wouldn’t flop over my face as usual and have to be fiddled with. I hated the feeling that everyone was wary and almost suspicious of everyone else. I tried to catch a couple of people’s eyes and give a couple of smiles, but no-one was really having it! And I was worried I’d accidentally get too close to someone and get barked at or something (and burst into tears!). But, it was fine. Everyone’s feeling the same, aren’t they?
Anyway, now I’m going to settle down continue editing my next book, in between supervising my kids with their school work, when needed, although they are old enough to get on with it themselves (in their dressing gowns, at present!). There’s already been a slight altercation over gradients, which luckily I was not called upon to assist with, in the end (thank you, YouTube), but we’ll see how we go…
I’ve never been a camper. My husband and I don’t believe in it. We tried glamping once and it wasn’t a good move. Despite having a blow-up bed, a proper duvet and an Aztec throw, we were absolutely freezing and I clung to his back like a koala all night, trying to keep warm and failing. I also thought, as a glamping/camping virgin, I’d sweetly lay my pyjamas out on my glampy pillow, before we went off festival-ing (80’s bands. Can I just put it here that Go West are still AMAZING?), only to return at 3am to find them, to my virgin horror, damp through and hideous. It was my second camping experience. The first was Guide camp, which also left me pretty unimpressed and with a lasting fear of chemical toilets…
Anyway, Emma Kennedy and her mum and dad used to go camping a lot, in the 1970s. Every camping holiday they took ended in complete disaster, and this book tells all the sorry tales of their adventures.
It is HILARIOUS. I read some of it while watching 90 Day Fiancé with my husband (how addictive is that programme, by the way? Well, not so addictive that you can’t read at the same time as watching it, but you know what I mean…) and kept bursting out laughing, which really annoyed him, but not enough for him to ask me what I was reading as that would be, like, indulging me. Some of these camping stories are unbelievable, and often quite revolting (they make the time I fell over and got covered head to foot in mud at Brands Hatch seem incredibly tame), but the way Emma writes about them is very, very funny indeed. If you need cheering up, or want to read something funny before bed, or have disastrous camping stories of your own that haunt you and you want to read about someone far, far worse off, then this is the book for you.
I loved the 70s nostalgia (I actually gasped when I saw the mention of the book Fattypuffs and Thinipers) I enjoyed the writing and I found the relationships between only child Emma and her parents, Tony and Brenda, really quite endearing. A great read!
I’d seen this memoir around a lot; it’s one of those books that, wherever you look at the moment, it seems to be there, but, although I’d seen it everywhere, I knew nothing whatsoever about it, apart from it was about a girl who grew up with no formal education. I was intrigued enough to download it, but when I started reading it, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy it at all. I’ve never been a fan of the ‘misery memoir’ and have tended to steer clear of them (do you remember when Sue Townsend satirised them in the Adrian Mole books? If I recall correctly, his mum, Pauline Mole, was writing one entitled A Girl Called “Shit”? That used to make me howl with laughter…). I don’t want to be miserable; I don’t want to read about real-life misery, particularly if it’s relentless. So, I have avoided the genre. But, I’m supposed to be reading memoirs of all sorts and detailing all sorts of lives, and this book intrigued me enough to read on … even once I knew exactly how miserable the set up of Tara’s life was.
Tara Westover was raised in a Mormon family in Idaho – a family of, quite frankly, crazy survivalists, who were off grid, anti-government, anti-medical intervention (which considering how many accidents they had was particularly crazy) and (again, quite frankly) abusive (that brother…. bloody hell!) Tara is not allowed to go to school. She has no birth certificate. She is forced to work in the family’s highly dangerous junk yard. Her life is grim, dangerous, grubby, scary, bigoted, and devoid of any chance to thrive. Yet somehow, against the odds, Tara does just that (although the path to a meaningful life, free of her family, is very difficult indeed) and ends up with the very best education of all, studying at Cambridge University. The story of how she gets there is truly amazing.
This book made me angry and sad. I was appalled at times, flinching at others – sometimes I wanted to put the book down and flounce off, to go and eat cake, have a hot chocolate and read a rom com; to immerse myself in loveliness and walk away from Educated‘s gritty reality and unpleasantness. I wanted to wash my hands of it, like Tara did of the grime after another day in the junkyard. But still I read on. Partly, because this book is beautifully written… if Tara Westover writes any fiction, I’ll be first in line to read it. But mostly because of the hope threaded throughout this narrative, even though it is a hope that is dangled, at times, then whipped away again; a hope Tara often extinguishes herself by her sometimes exasperating drive to keep going back home even though it’s the worst possible place for her: that house, that family, that mountain…
This is a compelling story of triumph against adversity. The triumph and the hope in this book are hard won and eloquently detailed and they come at a price, for both the writer and the reader: Tara continues to be estranged from several members of her family; I’ll be haunted in a tender but bleak way by this book for quite a long time – it has given me the most complicated book hangover. But I loved it. It’s magnificent. Everyone should read it.
Right, I’m going to read something light now. I’m going to read The Tent, The Bucket and Me by Emma Kennedy, about hilarious camping holidays in the 1970s. This may be accompanied by cake and hot chocolate…
Fiona Collins 