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Stories of Support
Stories of Support
Nov 15, 2024 2:43 AM

Author:Susan Lewis,Susan Lewis,Susan Lewis

Stories of Support

An inspirational collection of true stories, introduced and edited by Sunday Times bestselling author Susan Lewis and published in support of Breast Cancer Care.

All of us face challenges in our lives and when things get really difficult we often need someone to help us through. That someone can be the person closest to us, or someone we least expected, or even, in some cases, a total stranger.

The Stories of Support campaign was set up for people to share their story of how someone helped them, in order to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Care. In Susan Lewis’s novel, Never Say Goodbye, two strangers are brought together by tragedy and the bond that develops between them profoundly changes both their lives. Through Stories of Support Susan wanted to acknowledge the remarkable people who have given their support to friends, family, colleagues or the community.

The five women who wrote the stories in this collection were selected by Susan Lewis because of their moving accounts of the exceptional support they have experienced from selfless friends and family through the most difficult of times. With an introduction from Susan Lewis, Shelley, Kate, Julie, Jane and Jeanette show the restorative power of love and friendship in a collection of stories they hope will inspire many others.

Includes the first chapter of Never Say Goodbye.

Reviews

Dr Ellie is like the angel on your shoulder. She guides you gently through the ups and downs of parenthood.

—— Jools Oliver

This book encourages women to re-engage with their instincts, to trust themselves.

—— Polly Vernon , Times Magazine

Dr Ellie's book offers practical tried and tested advice.

—— Anna Tyzack , Telegraph

Dr Ellie Cannon offers reassuring advice for mums who just want to do the right thing.

—— Gurgle Magazine

Dr Ellie Cannon offers friendly advice to reassure even the most conerned parent

—— The Sun

The aim of the manual is to increase the confidence of new mums…

—— The Sun

News stories come and go. It takes a book of this exceptional caliber to focus our attention and marshal our collective commitment to preventing future nuclear horrors

—— Booklist

Gripping... exquisitely researched... A superbly crafted tale of Cold War America’s dark underside

—— Kirkus Reviews

This terrifyingly brilliant book - as perfectly crafted and meticulously assembled as the nuclear bomb triggers that lie at its core - is a savage indictment of the American strategic weapons industry, both haunting in its power, and yet wonderfully, charmingly human as a memoir of growing up in the Atomic Age

—— Simon Winchester, author of 'The Professor and the Madman' and 'Atlantic'

In this powerful work of research and personal testimony, Iversen chronicles the story of America’s willfully blinkered relationship to the nuclear weapons industry through the haunting experience of her own family in Colorado

—— Publishers Weekly

A classic horror tale: the charming nuclear family cruising innocently above the undercurrents of nuclear nightmare. But it's true and all the more chilling

—— Bobbie Ann Mason

What a surprise! You don't expect such (unobtrusively) beautiful writing in a book about nuclear weapons, nor such captivating storytelling. Having read scores of nuclear books, I venture a large claim: Kristin Iversen's Full Body Burden may be a classic of nuclear literature, filling a gap we didn't know existed among Hersey's Hiroshima, Burdick and Wheeler's Fail-Safe and Kohn's Who Killed Karen Silkwood?

—— Mark Hertsgaard, author of 'Nuclear Inc.' and 'HOT'

With meticulous reporting and a clear eye for details, Iversen has crafted a chilling, brilliantly written cautionary tale about the dangers of blind trust. Through interviews, sifting through thousands of records (some remain sealed) and even a stint as a Rocky Flats receptionist, she uncovers decades of governmental deception. Full Body Burden is both an engrossing memoir and a powerful piece of investigative journalism

—— Bookpage

A tale that will haunt your dreams

—— John Dufresne

Kristen Iversen's prose is clean and clear and lovely, and her story is deeply involving and full of insight and knowledge; it begins in innocence, and moves through catastrophes; it is unflinching and brave

—— Richard Bausch

An enjoyable and powerful read

—— Rosie Kinchen , Sunday Times

You may want to save it for a holiday or similar period as it will draw you in so completely that it is hard to stop reading

—— SEN Magazine

A beautifully written psychiatric study of difference and compassion

—— Jessie Burton , UK Press Syndication

It's an incredible book, that had me crying on the bus more than once

—— Reading Matters

Helping to improve attitudes.

—— David Aaronovitch , The Times

Outstanding book.

—— Louise France , The Times

I am staggered by these unsentimental and inspiring stories.

—— Sharon Guskin , The Lady

He writes unsentimentally… Reading this book changed the course of my work.

—— Henny Beaumont , Big Issue in the North

Far from the Tree is a landmark, revolutionary book… Andrew Solomon plumbs his topic thoroughly, humanely, and in a compulsively readable style that makes the book as entertaining as it is illuminating.

—— Jennifer Egan

One of the most extraordinary books I have read in recent times – brave, compassionate and astonishingly humane. Solomon approaches one of the oldest questions – how much are we defined by nature versus nurture? – and crafts from it a gripping narrative. Through his stories, told with such masterful delicacy and lucidity, we learn how different we all are, and how achingly similar. I could not put this book down.

—— Siddhartha Mukherjee

A passionate and affecting work that will shake up your preconceptions and leave you in a better place. It’s a book everyone should read… there’s no one who wouldn’t be a more imaginative and understanding parent – or human being – for having done so… breathtaking reading.

—— Julie Myerson , New York Times

Andrew Solomon reminds us that nothing is more powerful in a child’s development than the love of a parent. This remarkable new book introduces us to mothers and fathers – many in circumstances the rest of us can hardly imagine – who are making their children feel special, no matter what challenges come their way.

—— President Bill Clinton

"Parenting," writes Andrew Solomon in Far from the Tree, "is no sport for perfectionists." It's an irony of the book, 10 years in the making and his first since The Noonday Demon, that by militating against perfectionism, he only leaves the reader in greater awe of the art of the achievable. The book starts out as a study of parents raising "difficult" children, and ends up as an affirmation of what it is to be human.

—— Emma Brockes , Guardian

The first thing you should know about Andrew Solomon’s new book, Far From the Tree, is that it’s a monumental work. This is a masterpiece of non-fiction, the culmination of a decade’s worth of research and writing, and it should be required reading for psychologists, teachers, and above all, parents. Far From the Tree is a stunning work of scholarship and compassion.

—— USA Today

Knotty, gargantuan and lionhearted… Mr. Solomon’s first chapter, entitled 'Son', is as masterly a piece of writing as I’ve come across all year. It combines his own story with a taut and elegant précis of this book’s arguments. It is required reading.

—— Dwight Garner , New York Times

Far-reaching, original, fascinating - Andrew Solomon's investigation of many of the most intense challenges that parenthood can bring challenges us all to reexamine how we understand human difference. Perhaps the greatest gift of this monumental book, full of facts and full of feelings, is that it constantly makes one think, and think again.

—— Philip Gourevitch

An informative and moving book that raises profound issues regarding the nature of love, the value of human life and the future of humanity.

—— Kirkus (starred review)

Solomon is a storyteller of great intimacy and ease… [He] creates something of enduring warmth and beauty: a quilt, a choir.

—— Kate Tuttle , Boston Globe

Andrew Solomon provides us with an unrivalled educational experience about identity groups in our society, an experience that is filled with insight, empathy and intelligence. Reading Far from the Tree is a mind-opening experience.

—— Eric Kandel, author of The Age of Insight and winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine

Solomon is in many ways the perfect writer for the subject – nuanced, thorough, humane, and a gifted stylist.

—— Nathan Heller , New Yorker

Far From the Tree is a book of extraordinary ambition… From a writer known primarily as a historian of sadness, this sweeping tribute to the joys of parental love can be startling and ecstatic.

—— San Francisco Chronicle

A ground-breaking book

—— The Economist

Brought to life by its intimate domestic voices, many of them people who ended up falling in love with children they never knew they wanted

—— Economist

A life-changing book

—— Irish Examiner

Nobody could read this extraordinary, moving book and not feel enlightened, but above all enlarged, by it.

—— Sam Leith , Spectator

I'd suggest this be made compulsory reading for an couple considering having a baby... This is a remarkable work: moving but never bathetic, challenging in parts but always worth the effort. I'd call it extraordinary - if only Solomon would let me.

—— Rosamund Urwin , Evening Standard

A book brimming with poignancy

—— Dominic Lawson , Sunday Times

A fascinating examination of the accommodation of difference

—— Emma Brockes , Guardian

You don't so much read Far from the Tree as cohabit with it; its stories take up residence in your head and heart, messily unpack themselves and refuse to leave

—— Tim Adams , Observer

A generous, humane and — in complex and unexpected ways — compassionate book about what it means to be a parent

—— Julie Myerson , Scotsman

The book is about people and their experiences and it is rich with their strategies, smiles and sadnesses

—— David Aaronovitch , The TImes

Solomon writes movingly of the resources of support and empathy that he found among communities of the deaf, dwarfs, transgender children and people with Down’s syndrome

—— Jane Shilling

A catalogue of astonishing tenacity and unexpected joy that inevitably expands both our sympathies and sense of wonder at the immense variety of human experiences

—— Laurence Scott , Financial Times

This is a remarkable work: moving but never bathetic, challenging in parts, but always worth the effort

—— Rosamund Urwin , Evening Standard

Nobody could read this extraordinary, moving book and not feel enlightened, but above all enlarged by it

—— Sam Leith , Spectator

Far From the Tree is the most important book I’ve ever read. It is a masterpiece of research; giving an impressive insight into human relationships and our tolerance of those who are different. If everyone read this book the world would be a better place

—— Farm Lane Books

A monumental and generous-hearted book, balanced between the universal and the particular, and gorgeously observed

—— Deborah Cohen , Literary Review

Solomon’s compassionate study of these dozen loves that are, and are not, like each other, illuminates not so much the heroism of difficult kinds of love as the adaptability of every kind

—— Siobhan Garrigan , The Tablet

A triumphant celebration of the power of parental love

—— Maggie Fergusson , Intelligent Life

Forces] the reader to meditate on a number of wrenching, often heart-breaking aspects of existence. And to mediate as well on questions of stigma and prejudice, callousness and cruelty, the widespread and extraordinary intolerance of human diversity, and the horrors that those attitudes and behaviours heap on the heads of those whose lives are already extraordinarily difficult, and on the head of those who love and care for them

—— Andrew Scull , Times Literary Supplement
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