Your Beautiful (Ugly - Constance Briscoe)

Member Name: alginate

Product:	Ugly - Constance Briscoe
Date:	08/04/06 (2221 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes you realize what a wonderful human being your own mother truly is

Disadvantages: To many to mention, read the book

The oxford dictionary defines the word UGLY as unpleasant to look at-unattractive, so I guess at some point in all our lives we have all been guilty of calling something or somebody ugly.

For all the mothers out there who may read this, could you or would you ever call your child ugly?
No? somehow i didn't think you would

This review is about a book i have just read and it moved me so much i actually cried whilst reading it.
The title of the book is "UGLY" and is written by a truly remarkable lady called Constance Briscoe and it is the true story about her loveless childhood at the hands of her mother Carmen Briscoe, who in my opinion was not fit to look after a goldfish let alone 6 children.

Constance aka Clare was born on May 18th 1957, her mother Carmen was from Jamaica, she is described as being very slim and attractive, more like a film star than a mother, her father Goerge was also from Jamacia, he is described as being quite short for a man but a dapper dresser.
Between them they had 6 children of 4 girls and 2 boys, and one adopted daughter.
Clare was the 3rd child and was the child who was beaten, kicked, punched on a regular basis by her mother, there really seems to be no reason as to why clare was beaten so severley by her mother, the only reason i found whilst reading this book was her mother simply hated the poor child.
Clare suffered with the common childhood problem of bedwetting and suffered such severe violence as a result of this, her mother would beat her around the head with a shoe and scream at her that she was a dirty black whore who stunk of piss, and then make her repeat these words and promise not to wet the bed.
If the bed was wet the following morning the sheets were taken from the bed and left in the wardrobe along with the nightdress, and clare was forced to sleep on them even though they were still damp and smelley, this was one of her mothers cruel forms of punishment.
Another form of punishment was to grab clare by her nipples, her mother would pinch and squeeze them as hard as she could all the while screaming abuse at her.
This really did make me cry because as a child i often wet in my bed and could not imagine my mother being so bloody cruel and heartless towards her own flesh and blood.
At one point clare actually decribes the time when she went to social services and asked to be put into a childrens home, when social services told her to go home she did, only to drink from a bottle of bleach, as the bottle said kills all known germs dead and her mother had often told her she was a germ.
I wont go into the full story of this book as i really urge you to read it for yourselves, what i will say is, clare as she is known in the book despite being abused both phyically and emotionally by her mother survived, and went on to become a barrister in 1983, she also become one of the first women to sit as a judge in this country.

After reading this book, i actually gave my mum a kiss and told her how much i loved her and thanked my lucky stars that my mum was not some cruel, bitter twisted bitch.
Its a harrowing story with a remarkable end, so if your looking in your local book store and see this book on the shelf, buy it.
Avaliable in hard back and paper back, published by Hodder&Stoughton Ltd 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH

Summary: Some people should never ever be allowed to have children