indispensable reading

An astonishing book... it could save your life

Amazing... Her message is one that every woman must read

Ground-breaking

Easy to follow and practical for a busy lifestyle

These "Daffodil Girls", and scores of other army wives like them, are indeed amongst the unsung heroines of our times; and we as a nation owe not just their husbands, but these women too, an enormous debt of gratitude for all they achieve. Thank you so much for this book Kitty - I can not recommend it more highly to Service and civilian readers alike - It's a real gem!

Imagine Montaigne as a thoroughly modern unmarried mother and freelance journalist living in south London... Everywhere there is detail, and nuance, and care about others, and about words

Shilling is brave and endearingly frank

An intelligent discursion on what it means to be a no-longer-youthful female in a world obsessed with staying young ... Her thoughts are refreshing, provocative and a pleasure to read

Jane Shilling is an excellent writer...this is detailed, personal and memorable

The essay form, with its drifts and lurches, suits Shilling's purposes perfectly as she catalogues her experience of middle-ages confusion and loss... all with detail, nuance, enthusiasm and care

The usual stereotypes about grumpy old women are jettisoned in favour of ironic and nuanced observations about sexuality, identity and death in this crisply written memoir about middle age

An honest midlife memoir of ageing, false expectations and unrealised dreams

Detailed, personable and memorable

Her story may not be unusual, but the elegance and range of her writing most certainly is. The journey is a delight

Fans of this beautifully crafted, critically acclaimed memoir of middle-age might well take the view that it should be distributed free on the NHS to all women over 50... a penetrating analysis of the challenges and heartaches of life's middle phase

Shilling casts a self-critical eye over the events that have shaped her life

The specifics of her early abuse is vivid, violent, and no less horrifying for its familiarity... If the memoir was begun as a final exorcism of the monster mother, it ends with a moving acceptance of her

Moved me deeply. [It] celebrates the redeeming power of the written word and is undercut with an irresistible humour born of residence in hardship

An extraordinary tragic-comic literary autobiography

There is something darkly Dickensian in the urgency and energy of her character and quest, in the acute, abrupt style of her self-presentation and in the extreme characters who have informed her life

Funny and scary mixed together, in the manner of the Brothers Grimm, sharp as a knife, round as a child's eye

Difficult, spirited, engaging... a resonant affirmation of the power of storytelling to make things better

Moving, turbulent

Shattering, brilliant memoir... Here childhood eas ghastly, as bad as Dickens's stint in the blacking factory, but it was also the crucible for her incendiary talent

Verbalyl dazzling, emotionally searing, compassionate and often hilarious memoir

Jeanette Winterson's new memoir appears to have been highly praised, rightly it seems to me, for its zest and candour and noted for a quality that some reviewers have seen as haste or even carelessness but which I see as her characteristic lively, pugnacious inventiveness.

The prose is breathtaking: witty, biblical, chatty and vigorous all at once. She defines the pursuit of happiness not as being content (which is "fleeting" and "a bit bovine"), but as the impulse to "swim upstream", the search for a meaningful life. This breathless, powerful book is that search.

Winterson is a bold author with a track record of writing imaginative transformation tales, and this is a work about the power of words, stories and books to give identity to a life that is in turns shocking, funny, warm and wise.

Engaging memoir.

There clear-eyed, drily witty, searingly moving memoir.

It does all that committed fans might hope... This is far funnier than the novel that made Winterson’s name... Brilliant book.

An inspirational memoir written in beautiful exact prose that celebrates the wildness of the ordinary. Winterson’s understanding of who she is… is both appallingly funny and deeply moving. Essential reading for anyone with a snitch of an interest in writing

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? burrowed deep and made me laugh and weep. This memoir has a great warmth and an intensity and honesty that is rare and the writing is exceptional

Winterson’s unconventional and winning memoir wrings humor from adversity as it describes her upbringing by a wildly deranged mother

It is in laying the truth bare in this unflinchingly honest and gripping memoir that Winterson really seems to find self-acceptance, love and even happiness