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ClareR (6253 KP) rated All My Mothers in Books
Feb 8, 2022
After reading ‘The Other Half of Augusta Hope’, I was so excited to read ‘All My Mothers’. And I was not disappointed. Joanna Glen is rapidly becoming an auto-buy author for me - and this book is full of the same heart as Augusta Hope.
Eva Martinez-Green has two pivotal , life changing moments when she starts school: meeting Bridget Blume, and her teacher reading a book called ‘The Rainbow Rained Us’. Bridget becomes a lifelong friend, Bridget’s mother helps Eva to learn just what a mother can be like: loving and interested in her, unlike Eva’s own mother who has some serious mental health issues. In fact, Mrs Blume steps in to a mothering role for Eva, when Eva moves in due to her own mother having a prolonged stay in a clinic. Mrs Blume is Eva’s benchmark for being a mother for the rest of her life. For that short time she shows Eva affection, treats her like one of her own. Mrs Blume, along with her childhood book, leads Eva to realise that her mother isn’t her birth mother. And so begins the quest to find her.
Eva’s life in London helps the reader to learn about the characters, and when she starts to study in Cordoba, the real task of finding her birth mother begins.
I don’t want to give anything away, because I want you to read it!! It’s beautiful. I pretty much sobbed through the last couple of chapters, so have your tissues handy. But DO read it!!
Eva Martinez-Green has two pivotal , life changing moments when she starts school: meeting Bridget Blume, and her teacher reading a book called ‘The Rainbow Rained Us’. Bridget becomes a lifelong friend, Bridget’s mother helps Eva to learn just what a mother can be like: loving and interested in her, unlike Eva’s own mother who has some serious mental health issues. In fact, Mrs Blume steps in to a mothering role for Eva, when Eva moves in due to her own mother having a prolonged stay in a clinic. Mrs Blume is Eva’s benchmark for being a mother for the rest of her life. For that short time she shows Eva affection, treats her like one of her own. Mrs Blume, along with her childhood book, leads Eva to realise that her mother isn’t her birth mother. And so begins the quest to find her.
Eva’s life in London helps the reader to learn about the characters, and when she starts to study in Cordoba, the real task of finding her birth mother begins.
I don’t want to give anything away, because I want you to read it!! It’s beautiful. I pretty much sobbed through the last couple of chapters, so have your tissues handy. But DO read it!!
Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated The More you Ignore me in Books
Feb 20, 2022
31 of 230
Book
The more you ignore me
By Jo Brand
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Celebrity obsession, coming of age and cow shit - an hilarious, poignant and darkly comic novel by the Queen of Comedy.
Alice is a young girl growing up in a dysfunctional family in Herefordshire in the 1980s. Her mother is suffering a mental illness - she is on medication, is put away in an institution, but constantly escapes - while her father, Keith, very sweetly, tries to keep everything together. His in-laws, the Wildgooses, are a bunch of reckless, lawless country bumpkins and can offer very little help or sensible advice, preferring instead to remain in the pub or to use a shotgun to solve life's little problems. The only thing that gives meaning and hope to Alice as she makes her way through childhood, school and teenage trauma is her obsession with the singer Morrissey of The Smiths. She is desperate to see The Smiths at a live gig, but somehow her family always manages to derail her plans. Gradually her mother begins to share her fascination with the rock god and his presence in their lives goes someway to healing her and repairing her relationship with her long-suffering daughter.
This was really good! It was funny and darkly so. It follows the life of a young girl dealing with the effects her mothers mental illness has on her and her father. It’s has a dark underlay that as someone who struggles mentally I can relate too. So much better than I was expecting.
Book
The more you ignore me
By Jo Brand
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Celebrity obsession, coming of age and cow shit - an hilarious, poignant and darkly comic novel by the Queen of Comedy.
Alice is a young girl growing up in a dysfunctional family in Herefordshire in the 1980s. Her mother is suffering a mental illness - she is on medication, is put away in an institution, but constantly escapes - while her father, Keith, very sweetly, tries to keep everything together. His in-laws, the Wildgooses, are a bunch of reckless, lawless country bumpkins and can offer very little help or sensible advice, preferring instead to remain in the pub or to use a shotgun to solve life's little problems. The only thing that gives meaning and hope to Alice as she makes her way through childhood, school and teenage trauma is her obsession with the singer Morrissey of The Smiths. She is desperate to see The Smiths at a live gig, but somehow her family always manages to derail her plans. Gradually her mother begins to share her fascination with the rock god and his presence in their lives goes someway to healing her and repairing her relationship with her long-suffering daughter.
This was really good! It was funny and darkly so. It follows the life of a young girl dealing with the effects her mothers mental illness has on her and her father. It’s has a dark underlay that as someone who struggles mentally I can relate too. So much better than I was expecting.
Laura Doe (1350 KP) rated Never Never in Books
Oct 23, 2022
Serena Valentino’s books are amazing. This is the story of Captain Hook that I never knew that I needed.
We find out how Captain Hook learnt of Neverland in the first place… when he was a child he fell out of his pram and ended up in Neverland. He then spent the rest of his childhood years trying to get back there, when he realised he couldn’t, he decided that he was going to become and pirate and spent all of his years in school learning everything there was to know about pirates and ships so that when he graduated, he could join up and live out his dream.
This book not only gives us a backstory about Captain Hook, but we also have some pirate tales added in, with stories of Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. This just helps to give the book a little more depth around the backstory.
We also get to revisit Circe and Lucinda again, with Lucinda being as deceitful as ever and Circe still trying to fix everything her mothers have messed up. Although I didn’t see the twist at the end coming, but that just made the book better in my opinion.
Although it’s a short book, I didn’t feel like the story was rushed in the slightest. And as with all of the other villains books, I started to feel some sympathy towards Captain Hook and understood how he became the person that he is in Peter Pan.
We find out how Captain Hook learnt of Neverland in the first place… when he was a child he fell out of his pram and ended up in Neverland. He then spent the rest of his childhood years trying to get back there, when he realised he couldn’t, he decided that he was going to become and pirate and spent all of his years in school learning everything there was to know about pirates and ships so that when he graduated, he could join up and live out his dream.
This book not only gives us a backstory about Captain Hook, but we also have some pirate tales added in, with stories of Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. This just helps to give the book a little more depth around the backstory.
We also get to revisit Circe and Lucinda again, with Lucinda being as deceitful as ever and Circe still trying to fix everything her mothers have messed up. Although I didn’t see the twist at the end coming, but that just made the book better in my opinion.
Although it’s a short book, I didn’t feel like the story was rushed in the slightest. And as with all of the other villains books, I started to feel some sympathy towards Captain Hook and understood how he became the person that he is in Peter Pan.
ClareR (6253 KP) rated Roar: A Story for Every Woman in Books
Nov 13, 2019
On the whole, I enjoyed this book of short stories. They’re all stories about women who are unhappy about some aspect of their lives, have lost their way and are working out how to get back. They’re all a bit magical realism, and just plain fantasy sometimes (this is not a bad thing for me, by the way!), and ‘Feminist Aesop’s Fables’ kept popping in to my head. It’s definitely a book to dip in to, and I did so whilst reading other books - I could see that reading all of these in one go could be overwhelming.
I think that these stories have a bit of something for everyone. I didn’t enjoy all of them, but I did have my favourites: The Woman Who Grew Wings is about a woman who flees her country with her family to live in the West, and the negative attitudes of the other mothers at the school gates (they’re not nice people) - this brought me to tears actually. The Woman Who Was Swallowed Up by the Floor and Who Met Lots of Other Women Down There Too - because who HASN’T had this happen to them at least once in their lives?! The Woman Who Ate Photographs was another tear jerker about how visual prompts (the photos) can bring back feelings connected to smell, touch, and the memories of our children before they grew into hairy teenagers (this one did for me, I’m afraid!).
I think all of these stories will resonate with someone.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy of this book to read and review.
I think that these stories have a bit of something for everyone. I didn’t enjoy all of them, but I did have my favourites: The Woman Who Grew Wings is about a woman who flees her country with her family to live in the West, and the negative attitudes of the other mothers at the school gates (they’re not nice people) - this brought me to tears actually. The Woman Who Was Swallowed Up by the Floor and Who Met Lots of Other Women Down There Too - because who HASN’T had this happen to them at least once in their lives?! The Woman Who Ate Photographs was another tear jerker about how visual prompts (the photos) can bring back feelings connected to smell, touch, and the memories of our children before they grew into hairy teenagers (this one did for me, I’m afraid!).
I think all of these stories will resonate with someone.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy of this book to read and review.
RT
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BookwormLea (3034 KP) rated Annabelle Comes Home (2019) in Movies
Jun 24, 2020
Contains spoilers, click to show
I love the Conjuring series. I find it fascinating. I'm a little obsessed with Ed and Lorraine Warren so I watch anything to do with the universe. After the second Conjuring film, this is my favourite. It takes a lot for a horror to scare me and though it wasn't terrifying it made me jump a lot! That feeling like you're on a rollercoaster dipping down! I love it!!!!
It's set after the Conjuring (or inbetween depending on your source) after the Warren's have the doll secured in their occult museum. Mary Ellen is babysitting Judy, the Warren's daughter (who we learnt in the Conjuring shares her mothers gift) and her friend Danielle, distraught from the death of her father, pays a visit. The events after are pretty much all her fault. I kind of hate her for it despite understanding her reasoning. While the other films focus mainly on the demon Valek or the Annabelle doll demon (with the exception of the many spirits in the first conjuring) this film has a lot of the other never before mentioned spirits that the real Ed and Lorraine have written about. The White Lady, the Samurai, the Black Shuck. I was actually concerned for how they would portray the Werewolf after such disasters as teen wold or an American Werewolf in London but was happily suprised that they made it work quite well. Of course there is a semi happy ending and all is well, Judy gets her birthday and some friends and Danielle has closure but I'm very much looking forward to the third Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Released this year hopefully!!!!!
It's set after the Conjuring (or inbetween depending on your source) after the Warren's have the doll secured in their occult museum. Mary Ellen is babysitting Judy, the Warren's daughter (who we learnt in the Conjuring shares her mothers gift) and her friend Danielle, distraught from the death of her father, pays a visit. The events after are pretty much all her fault. I kind of hate her for it despite understanding her reasoning. While the other films focus mainly on the demon Valek or the Annabelle doll demon (with the exception of the many spirits in the first conjuring) this film has a lot of the other never before mentioned spirits that the real Ed and Lorraine have written about. The White Lady, the Samurai, the Black Shuck. I was actually concerned for how they would portray the Werewolf after such disasters as teen wold or an American Werewolf in London but was happily suprised that they made it work quite well. Of course there is a semi happy ending and all is well, Judy gets her birthday and some friends and Danielle has closure but I'm very much looking forward to the third Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Released this year hopefully!!!!!
Dave Navarro recommended Ordinary People (1980) in Movies (curated)
Of Women and Salt
8.0
Rate It
Book
Five generations of women, linked by blood and circumstance, by the secrets they share, and by a...