Product Description

From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through adolescence, leaving herself teetering on the brink of the 1960's, Lorna Sage vividly and wittily brings to life a vanished time and place and illuminates the lives of three generations of women.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61179 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
This is one of those memoirs of a difficult, sometimes violent girlhood, that makes riveting reading--not as harrowing as Andrea Ashworth's brilliant Once in a House on Fire, but every bit as good. Whether this is voyeuristic is debatable, but clearly the author, Lorna Sage, felt she had something to tell, and she tells it vividly. She grew up with an absent father, a quiet and docile mother, and--the two most powerful figures of her formative years--a pair of ferocious, tyrannical, impossible grandparents. Her grandfather is the most striking of all, not least because he was a Church of England clergyman. Sage offers an unforgettable evocation of this bitter, hard-drinking, womanising cleric, as he strides through the desolate churchyard with his little granddaughter clinging onto his black skirts in the wind. "He was good at funerals, being gaunt and lined, marked with mortality. He had a scar down his hollow cheek, too, which grandma had done with the carving knife one of the many times when he came home pissed and incapable." The place, too, is strongly evoked: a small, isolated, squalid village on the English-Welsh border in darkest Shropshire, the very landscape of that haunting writer of the 1920s, Mary Webb. Sometimes, though, Sage's girlhood--we're only talking 1940s and 1950s here--feels more like it is something out of the pages of the Brontës, and indeed she acknowledges this freely. "Perhaps I really did grow up, as I sometimes suspect, in a time warp, an enclave of the 19th century?" That weird sense of anachronism makes this a riveting if sometimes uncomfortable read.--Christopher Hart

Daily Telegraph
'Bad Blood is pretty much in a class of its own . . . It is a measure of her achievement that she can turn the peculiarities of her own past - and they are peculiar - into a narrative that speaks for the whole of post-war Britian . . . This is not just an exquisite personal memoir, it is a vital piece of our collective past.'

Doris Lessing
'This could have been the saddest book you have ever read, but because of Lorna Sage's relish in the details, her exuberant celebration of the vitality of this clever, surviving girl, it is as enjoyable a book as I remember reading.'

Customer Reviews

Too long and drawn out for me.
This book leaves nothing to the imagination as too-detailed-descriptions drag on. It`s good to know what places look like - but come on don`t kill it..
I was sooooo depressed with the constant harping on about the overgrown garden - reminded me of my childhhood in our overgrown garden - and i don`t need any reminders of that thank you very much..
While reading this i found my mind wandering to other things - and that`s not a good sign is it ? I didn`t enjoy this at all, but 3 for trying.

Wonderful
I can almost understand why some reviewers thought this memoir boring but I have to say I enjoyed it from start to finish, but especially the opening chapters about the grandfather and grandmother - the descriptions of the grandmother's childhood home were marvellous. The writing is immediate and compelling, very good indeed, in fact.

'Bad Blood' By Lorna Sage
This true story by Lorna Sage grips your heart but also lifts your spirits as she describes her life throughout the war as a young child. Her childhood through post war Britain is described brilliantly, and memories of her family almost bring tears to your eyes. It is unexpected in some areas with some mad situations she finds herself in. it is definitely a memorable book and is also an insight into life in wartimes. She describes her feelings in great detail and you actually feel that you are there in the war with her, experiencing exactly what she is going through and what she has suffered. But at the same time you wish you weren't there and feel lucky to live in the generation we do. You feel sorry for her and her family for what they had to live in and live through. Finally this is an excellent book, a masterpiece, recommended to anyone. It captures your heart and in my view there won't be a better memoir published.