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Family Romance: A Memoir - John Lanchester

Description: ISBN 0571234402 / Author: John Lanchester / Genre: Biography / Family Romance is a beautifully written memoir in which John Lanchester ... more

Family Romance: A Memoir - John Lanchester ... joins the dots of his parents' history, their extraordinary secrets and the shape of their shared life. From his grandparents' beginnings in rural Ireland and colonial Rhodesia, Lanchester navigates through his parents lives: his father Bill's devastating war-time separation from his parents; his mother Julia's tragic first love, her decision to become a nun and her adoption of a new identity. Lanchester illuminates their characters and Julia's motives with moving insight. Family Romance is a book about reticence and its costs. It is a story about love and fearing the strength of your own feelings; about family ties, and the flight from family, and the deep human need to keep secrets.

Newest Review: ... family members and historical research makes for fascinating reading. Lanchester traces his mother, Julia’s life from her ... more

... Irish roots as the eldest of eight in a comparatively poor family in County Mayo, though her education to her entry as a postulant into a Roman Catholic order, her subsequent leaving of that order and training as a nurse , followed by her re-entry into holy orders (after the death of her fiancé from TB). There she remained for thirteen years, most of which time was spent teaching in India at a time when that country was struggling for independence. At 38, she finally left the religious life and , with the help of her m...more

Read Reviews for Family Romance: A Memoir - Joh...

Family Romance: A Memoir - John Lanchester: Places We Don't Go To - An Extraordinary Family History (761 words)
by - written on 24/07/07 (Very useful, 99 readings)
Rating:

In a dull moment, I “clicked” on one of those Amazon e-mails recommending a title which it was thought might suit my taste. (It’s spooky the way they seem to know so much about my literary and musical weaknesses!) . Skimming through the available synopsis, I read that the author discovered shortly after his mother’s death that she had “hidden her true identity and assumed another’s”. So strange did this seem to me, as the product of a very mundane family with only a minimal number of skeletons in our closets, I was hooked and ordered the title immediately. The uncovering of this fact led Lanchester to a realisation of how little he actually knew about his ... Read the complete review

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