A ‘Reading for Wellbeing’ recommended read!
This is not about me by Janice Galloway
This book is a fictionalised memoir from Janice Galloway. It tells the story of her childhood in Ayrshire in the 50s/60s. It’s beautifully written, dark but funny. The main characters are her family – her mother who seems to live her life in silent rage, her slightly scary older sister Cora, her boozy father and Janice herself.
I chose this book because although it’s about a sometimes difficult and quite tough childhood, it’s not a ‘misery memoir’. You feel for all the characters. There are no victims or villians, just people struggling to get by and at the end of the book is the dysfunctional but still loving relationship between Janice and her mother and the fierce energy and intelligence of this small girl. At the end of the book you feel although she is indelibly shaped by her childhood, she is not defined by it.
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