This book is a memoir written by a well-known writer of fiction. She attempts to recount her life from early to present and she does this astonishingly and amazingly. The early part of her life is masked in conceit, from a father who is one day replaced by a step-father and she is never told why, to bullying at school and a strange set of symptoms which come and go but are never diagnosed.
She then takes us through her high school years at a Catholic grammar school where she eventually becomes head girl before going to London School of Economics to study law, here she finds happiness in her studies but a lack of money means she eventually moves to Sheffield to go to university there and finds an environment wholly unaccepting of women, it is here that she falls deeply ill and the medical profession fails her, diagnosing a woman who won't shut up about pain as psychologically ill and she learns to grin and bear what would have been unbearable pain.
The ghosts in the book come as she learns the real reason for her sickness throughout her life, she is rendered infertile and the children she can never have haunt her life and become pieces of the past that never existed.
The book is separated into five parts, each detailing different stages of what parts of her life she can remember. The writing is beautifully crafted, at times with black humour and at other times horribly sad. Some parts of her life, such as her relationship with her husband that breaks up and reforms are never explained in as much depth as her feelings towards certain people and the denials she has received during her life.
I don't think I'm giving this book credit, I highly recommend it.
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