Product Description

From her earliest years with a boozy, accident-prone father and a reluctantly pragmatic mother Janice Galloway's grew up as a watcher - careful and vigilant. Then her parents' marriage broke up and mother and daughter moved to an attic above a doctor's surgery. When her big sister Cora returned home, with her steady stream of boyfriends, snappy dress sense and matching temper, evasion became a way of life. This is a funny and telling book about the routine dependencies and confusions, hopes and triumphs of childhood: it is also a book about emergence, as slowly, the beginnings of unsuspected rage that pushed the silent girl towards her voice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22983 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'Sublime prose and fierce honesty set it apart - Part of Galloway's skill in This is Not About Me is how she keeps a child's sense of bewilderment and secret understanding' -Telegraph'Blistering, terrifying, always moving' - Independent on Sunday'Galloway provides sentences blazing with light, a gorgeous draft of terror' Observer'Galloway takes her readers straight back into childhood's wincingly recognisable uncertainties, dislocations and disruptions. She had more of them than most - one of the most moving, yet completely unsentimental, accounts of growing up that you will ever read' - Scotsman'A literary, not a misery, memoir. There is mirth, and a Proustian attention to the sights, sounds and smells of the industrialized coast of Clydeside' - Sunday Times'On reluctantly closing the boards of this unforgettable memoir, the words A"first volumeA" are strangely comforting - a combination of Galloway's power and the fact that the wee girl done good make it so' - Scotland on Sunday'A dazzling book - Galloway is brilliant on the minute detail of childhood perception. She is also brave, funny, resilient and in spite of everything full of emotional generosity' - Daily Mail'A book unlike any other, in which Galloway has captured what it means to start to become yourself' - Guardian

Review
'The writing, like all of her writing, is pared down, chisel-perfect'

Review
`The memoir is a welcome addition to Galloway's varied and impressive body of work'

Customer Reviews

An extraordinary portrait of childhood
This wonderful book has all the emotional and intellectual impact of Galloway's award-winning fiction. Somewhere between novel and traditional memoir, she breaks new ground in writing a brave, forceful, funny and searingly honest book that is a far removed from the so-called "misery memoir". "This is not about me" is exactly that - not about one person but about how we are all are made by those around us. She writes directly from the child's point of view, sharp and clear, in rainbow colours. The characters of her mother and unhappy sister, Cora, in particular are wonderful portraits, clear-eyed and without any trace of self-pity, judgement or rancour. Music, a love of words and learning, compassion for everyday life is here writ large. "A book unlike any other" wrote Lavinina Greenlaw in the Guardian - and that's exactly what it is.

stunning
I loved this book. It was both subtle and descriptive. The ability to write about such a poverty stricken life without any hint of pity-searching, shows how great a talent Galloway is. I truly recommend this for a piece of hidden Scottish social history. It is not glamorized misery lit, it is a tale of a child's wonder and wit, whilst waiting to mature.

A beautiful, intelligent and moving portrayal of childhood
I was blown away by this book. `This is Not About Me' may be based on her own experiences of growing up in the 1950s and 60s in Saltcoats, but in its sharply drawn, vividly realised evocation of childhood, Janice Galloway transcends time and space. I found myself reliving my own experience of growing up, as sights, sounds and sensations long forgotten came flooding back.

`This is Not About Me' is dark, certainly; it is also full of the excitement and wonder of growing up, as well as the pain and confusion. As the child gradually begins to confront the reality of what is going on around her, and to develop her own separate identity, the book reaches an oddly exultant conclusion.

If you want to read a book which will draw you in from page 1, and which will remain with you long after you have finished it, go for this one. I ordered three copies for friends for Christmas and am about to order more to send to friends overseas.