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Mummy Told Me Not to Tell - Cathy Glass
by fifi1993 once picking up this book i didn't went to put it down it was so memorising with each chapter telling a different story to the boys life Reece and Cathy glass and her family Paula,Adrian and Lucy. Cathy glass is a foster carer who write true stories based on there experience, in this book she is fostering a boy name Reece ... nicknamed sharkie by his mom Tracey because he bites, it tells us about how Reece has been to 4 other carers because of his behaviour and Cathy is his last hope which i find so amazing that even thou he has been with 4 other carers Cathy is willing to give him a chance, it explains everything that happened in Reece life and the reason why he and his sisters and brother was taken into care, it also mentions his education what he does at school him behaving badly then at home behaving good, the sexual behaviour and what he likes and dislikes this being tv and burger anc chips, after reading this book i went in search of another book by cathy glass ;) 5 stairs Read the complete review |
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Disgraced - Saira Ahmed
by catsholiday Disgraced by Saira Ahmed ISBN - 9780755318162 PRICE - £7.99 but on amazon used they are a lot less I bought this book along with Jasvinder Sanghera's books 'Shame' and ' daughter's of Shame'. The reason for my interest was that at the time I was supporting a Muslim girl with three children who had been beaten ... by her husband of an arranged marriage and yet her family still wanted her to go back to him despite the fact she was hospitalized by him. I don't think anyone who has no connection with the Muslim family control and honour and culture can possibly have any idea how strong the tentacles are in the community. It is more important for the family honour to be upheld than it is to save your daughter's life is the bottom line. In fact some families will in extreme case even kill their own daughter if they feel she has disgraced them. I think you have to have an understanding of this in order to understand how trapped Saira felt in her life and it is from this background that she tells her story which she tells her story. A BIT ABOUT SAIRA'S STORY Saira was a daughter in a large extremely strict Muslim family where honour was to be protected at all costs. Any disgrace or perceived disgrace that you might be bringing on the family was severely punished. Saira's mother was well aware of the fact that her brothers were rather more friendly than she wanted them to be with her when the parents were out and yet did nothing and the only support Saira got was to be allowed to sleep in her mother's room. The father ignored the situation even blaming Saira for the situation. Saira's family decide her future husband but she refuses to marry someone she has been told to. However she does meet a young Muslim lad and they fall for each other. One day walking back from town they are spotted holding hands by her brother and all hell breaks loose. They ship her off to Pakistan to marry someone against her will. The arranged marriage is to a family member as is so often the case and sadly this man turns out to be a violent and unpleasant man who rapes her whenever he feels he should be allowed access to her body as his matrimonial right. Saira manages somehow to escape this nightmare and returns to the Uk which is where she considers her home even though it does put her in danger with her family. She sensibly manages to get accommodation in hostels and safe houses and tries to rebuild her life and also contacts her family. This is where I really feel for this poor girl, despite the fact that she has been treated appallingly she still wants to re contact her family. The family meanwhile are having problems as the brothers get mixed up with crime and drugs the family struggle with mounting debts. Saira amazingly wants to help them and this is when she turns to becoming an escort. I find it hard to feel for the family that push out their daughter to marry someone in another country when she was actually in love with a perfectly suitable partner of the same religion and in this country and then allow their sons to bring what I consider far more disgrace by their drinking, gambling, drugs and criminal activity. It beggars belief really. The parents need a darn good wake up to reality call in my view. This is not a girl who has many choices but this is also not the way she imagined spending her life. Will her huge self sacrifice win her family back for her and will they actually appreciate the fact that she is helping them out? MY THOUGHTS This is a true life story so the usual discussion of characters and plot do not apply. The outline I have given only scratches the surface of the story and all that Saira tells of her life and how she managed to drag herself back into society from the pretty horrendous start she has thans to her family who should have been the ones protecting her. I am not sure I would have gone down the route she took but then I have never been in such a desperate situation either. I cannot imagine not having the support of my family and the shock of being shipped off to another country to marry a violent stranger. All credit to her for her escape as it cannot have been easy. I think the only thing that I would NOT have done is try to have any contact with the family that betrayed me so badly. I am not sure I could even have forgiven their behavior and would have tried to sort out my life without them in it at all. I am quite certain I would NOT have handed them money to bail out the losers of my brothers had I been in that situation. I felt shocked at Saira's story and was strangely drawn into her tale. I wanted to get the parents and give them a darn good wake up call. They should have been jailed for child abuse for the way they treated their children in my view. Had anyone reported them they may well have had them taken away and certainly put on the 'at risk' register. I am aware that all Muslim families are not violent and many allow their children to marry their choice of partner but still so many send them back to Pakistan to marry cousins and family member s and not only is this not the way of English law but it is also meaning that many are having children with disabilities which is awful for the children s they are the ones who have to struggle. Sadly there doen't seem to be a way of stopping this if those involved are happy to go along with it. When I say 'happy' I mean that they accept that is what is going to happen and don't fight it, not that they are actually happy in the true sense of the word. I felt that Saira was a very brave and obviously a woman with tremendous determination and generosity of spirit. My heart went out to her and her family really don't deserve such an amazingly selfless daughter. This is a true story of one young Muslim girls' life and it should not be happening in our country. Thankfully people like Jasvinder Sanghera have done a lot to help so many young people being forced to marry against their will or trapped in that sort of marriage. She has brought this to the attention of the police and other useful authorities both here and in India, not sure about Pakistan though. Hopefully things will improve for these youngsters over the next two or three generations . This is a horrifying story and one that did have me shocked and I am so pleased that she did manage to turn her life around and write this book to raise awareness of the plight of so many young Asian girls. Saira will not allow her daughters to go through what she did and still a practicing Muslim but nowhere in the Muslim religion does it say you have to marry a person of your parent's choice nor does it say you must marry a relative, that is a cultural not a religious decision . Saira says that she feels honesty and openness rather than strictness and control is the way to bring up a family and I would agree. I have read a number of true life stories over the years and while they may not be the best written books they certainly are an eye opener. Even having worked with children in care and volunteering for Homestart I am still shocked at some things I read. Thanks for reading. This review may be posted on other sites under my same username. ©Catholiday Read the complete review |
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Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee
by JOHNDMR THE AUTHOR Laurie Lee (1914-97) was a poet, novelist and screenwriter, born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, and raised in the village of Slad two miles away. 'Cider With Rosie', first published 1959, the first volume of an autobiographical trilogy, is his most famous title, with world sales of over six million to date. Almost ever ... since I can remember, it has been near the top of my list as regards suggestions from various other people - including other dooyooers - that 'this is one of the books you simply must read'. In its fifty-odd years, many others have. And at last I can join the in crossing this one off the list. THE BOOK Chapter 1 begins with quite an arresting opening as he tells of being set down from the carrier's cart when he was but three years old; 'and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.' The countryside may have later become for him a place of cosy nostalgic memories, but as a small child, little more than a baby, it was a frightening world of tall grass in June, even taller than he was, towering above him and all around him, 'each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight'. Throughout the book is coloured with descriptions such as these of what it was like to be a child, frightened by a world which gradually became less so with the passing years. It was certainly not an idyllic existence, but he gradually grew into it (as we all do, I suppose). And the life was naturally a simple one. His mother and siblings had to rely on a small wood fire to cook, and a hand pump in the scullery for water. His sisters worked in Stroud at the weaving looms or in shops, while he and his brothers, all much younger, used to play, stuff themselves silly on wild fruits in season, and try to avoid being roped in to help with household chores. The first great event he recalls, not surprisingly, is the end of the Great War. His description of the day is remarkable, even more so given that he would have been only four years old at the time. We can almost feel we were there with him as the news came through, as he describes the sight and sound of 'a low sky whirling with black clouds, a roaring wood, stirring great seas of sound'. Short of quoting the whole passage, it's difficult to convey in a review of this nature, but it pinpoints precisely why Lee is such a gifted, poetic writer, evoking and conveying an atmosphere in words and turning a commonplace event into something that becomes little short of spectacular. For him, the end of the war also suggests the end of the world - understandable at that tender age - and wonders what will become of his father and uncles, who were all in the army. Would they die now the war was over? Childhood was a voyage of discovery, but with plenty of sinister episodes along the way. One of the places where he and his brothers used to play was in a tumbledown cottage in the woods, with shattered windows and rotting stairs. Named Hangman's House, it had a dark history which they would only hear about much later. The local hangman lived there with his son. One dark night he was going about his normal duties at the gallows, despatching felons to meet their maker. He was handed a shivering boy, dealt with him in the usual manner, and only when a cloud moved from the moon and lit up the gallows. He saw the face of his son staring down at him, went back to his cottage, drove a hook into the wall and fixed a noose for himself. Nobody ever lived in the cottage again. There are thankfully less grim experiences as well in these pages. We read of various rites of passage, such as Laurie's sleeping in his mother's bed at first (his father had abandoned them when he left to fight in the war) and then forced out by his younger brother, and of his being sent to the village school. He had to be carried there kicking and bawling, deaf to admonitions from his sisters that boys who did not go to school would be put into boxes, turned into rabbits and eaten on Sundays. As with most rural communities, there are always some local eccentrics. Two elderly neighbours are the 'grannies in the wainscot' who never liked each other, and arrange top leave the house by different paths, shop on different days and so on, in order to avoid having to meet. Soon after one is taken ill and dies, the other one fades away and follows her. It was as if the petty mutual sparring gave each other a reason to live, warped though it may have been. There are also chapters on his sickly childhood when he was so often at death's door, on his mother who worked so valiantly to sustain and bring up the family, who had a marvellous ability to grow plants, and on Christmas when the village boys would go carol singing as they carried old cocoa tins stuffed with burning rags to keep their hands warm. I also enjoyed his descriptions of outings and festivals, such as the colourful affair of Peace Day in 1919, and village outings in charabancs to Weston-super-Mare. All things have to come to an end. There is the loss of innocence as the boys become adolescents and experience the first stirrings of love - or is it lust? This is where the title comes in, when Laurie is seduced by one Rosie Burdock underneath a hay wagon after a drink of cider - 'never to be forgotten, or ever tasted again'. Finally, the old village community gradually disintegrates with the coming of the motorbike and the car, the death of the older locals, and also of the long-estranged Mr Lee, followed by the speedy death of his widow. The sisters are courted and move away to a new life, and in the last paragraph Laurie, preparing himself for the larger world beyond, discovers his true vocation - as a poet. OVERALL At first I found this book merely pleasant but not exceptional, and wondered if it was perhaps a little overrated. It was only after I began to reread different chapters and passages in isolation that it dawned on me what an evocative work it was. It's not one of those books which grabs you by the collar figuratively speaking, but more the kind of gentle read which beckons you into its slipstream and draws you in bit by bit, as his descriptions really came alive as you can start to smell the country air, or hear the sounds of summer around you. It is not a book to be read once and then put aside, but to be savoured in all its detail and thought about. Moreover it is on the whole a peaceful story, but with dark overtones. I am very glad I made the effort to get round to reading it eventually. [Revised version of a review I originally posted on ciao] Read the complete review |
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Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd / Biography / 5 Jan 2012 / Patrick Swayze's widow writes about life after Patrick's death |
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Hardcover: 336 pages / Biography / Publisher: HarperSport / Published: 13 Sep 2012 |
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Paperback: 112 pages / Biography / Publisher: Corgi / Published: 31 Jan 2013 |
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Paperback: 368 pages / Biography / Publisher: Phoenix / Published: 17 Mar 2011 |
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Genre: Biography / Author: Sonali Deraniyagala / Hardcover / 224 Pages / Book is published 2013-03-12 by Virago |
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Author: Michael Bolton / Biography / Hardcover / 352 Pages / Book is published 2013-02-14 by Sphere |
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Genre: Biography / Author: Paula Byrne / Hardcover / 400 Pages / Book is published 2013-01-17 by HarperPress |
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Genre: Biography / Author: Gillian Shephard / Hardcover / 288 Pages / Book is published 2013-03-18 by Biteback Publishing |
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Author: John Healy / Biography / Paperback / 288 Pages / Book is published 2008-07-31 by Penguin Classics |
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Author: Michael Harding / Biography / Paperback / 320 Pages / Book is published 2013-02-01 by Hachette Books Ireland |
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