Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97083 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Synopsis
Catherine Cookson is known and loved for her vibrant and earthy novels set in and around the North-East of England, past and present. Her autobiography makes plain how it is she who knows her background and her characters so well. The "Our Kate" of the title is not Catherine Cookson, but her mother, around whom the autobiography revolves. Despite her faults, Kate emerges a warm and loveable human figure. "Our Kate" is an honest statement about living with hardship and poverty, seen through the eyes of a highly sensitive child and woman, whose zest for life and unquenchable sense of humour won through to make Catherine Cookson the warm, engaging and human writer she is today.

About the Author
Catherine Cookson
Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.

Customer Reviews

ONE OF MY FAVOURITES.
If you enjoyed catherine cookson`s novels you will love this. It is the true story of catherine cookson`s childhood. It tells how her mother had to pretend to be her sister as she was born out of wedlock. There is laughter, tears, abuse, happiness, sadness, hardship - all the things in catherine`s novels are here in this book, and after you`ve read it you will understand why she wrote some of the stories - there are actually parts of her life mingled in there.
"Read the book and know the man...."
Brilliant read !
Why does no-one review cookson`s books..? She was absolutely the best in her field and deserves to be remembered.

A touching autobiography
Catherine Cookson doesn't pull any punches when it comes to talking about her emotions, her childhood and upbringing. This autobiography traces her life from an early age in amazing detail and the reader is drawn into the life and times of the poor northern community that she comes from. Don't expect to read too much about her writing career - she mentions it and talks of early influences but surprisingly (?) she doesn't dwell on it - preferring (as the title suggests) to concentrate on her mother! Catherine’s mother is an alcoholic and the book centres around her influence and the effect that she had on her. There is a sense of her laying some old ghosts to rest and as I said she doesn’t pull her punches, talking of her hatred and shame of her mother, yet it’s also quite obvious to the reader that she loves her deeply. She is also very open about her own nervous breakdown. I would recommend this book even if you haven’t read any of her novels – it’s sad, touching and in places funny. If you have read any of Catherine’s Cookson’s novels you will realise that her own life is at the heart of every one of them!

This shows how life was on Tyneside between the wars.
I first read this book in 1968 and have looked forward to every newbook that Catherine Cookson wrote. Her grasp of life on Tyneside is so good. I am passing this book on to my daughters because this explains their "roots" better than I can. Now we are living in the US my children and grandchildren love tales of Tyneside.