Beautifully written with many fantastic literary quotes throughout. I am sure that those who have studied literature and enjoy prose and linking of works with one another will find this a joy but for the average person wanting a good read, even an autobiographical one, this is hard work. Sadly not one of my favourites.

This is a cleverly written memoir about growing up in a commune during the 70s and 80s. I really expected to enjoy this book after reading the blurb and some readers comments.
Unfortunately this was one book I could not connect with.

I found this book very disjointed and not easy to read. I appreciate the literary skill the author has and the way she intertwined her life with characters from books but I struggled all the way through this and at the end was still not sure why I read it. If it was not for Sally’s literature quotes it would have been turgid and I would only have given one star . I do not like the style of this book.

Sally narrates her life intertwining the tales with the books she is reading at the time. This is a lovely, quirky book but sadly not right for me. I can see that many will find it charming and I am aware of its good points but I just couldn't keep on top of the story and gave up half way through. Perhaps my brain is just too cluttered to follow such a fractured narrative. Perhaps at another time in my life I would really enjoy this book, but not right now.

It is certainly beneficial to know something about the author before reading this book. Sally Bayley, the writer, made a decision to put herself into care at the age of 14. She subsequently studied at Oxford University where she is now a lecturer in English. She has written several academic texts concerning Sylvia Plath, the diary as literary genre and American poetry. This book is an account of her childhood and adolescence in a household with her mother, aunt, grandmother and several siblings and cousins. The young Sally escaped the household problems in the local library, particularly enjoying Agatha Christie murder mysteries, Jane Eyre and David Copperfield. This text tells her story via real and imagined intertextual references from these sources and others including Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas. The author is very clearly a book lover and the reader needs to have some awareness of these texts to make the most of the narrative. Dr Bayley has adopted an interesting approach to the autobiographical genre which mostly reads as if written by the young teenager who put herself in care rather than by the adult academic writing in retrospect. I did find some of the account confusing but this perhaps mirrors the confusion experienced by Sally as a child, not knowing the actual identity and purpose of all the adults going in and out of her chaotic home life. I received a complimentary ARC of this book from the publisher via Net Galley in return for an honest review.

This is described as a memoir and ‘a life built by books’. Sounds perfect. A completely unusual formula with excerpts from texts like Jane Eyre and Janet and John reader books. I promise I was not just confused, I was bewildered. I read a quarter of the book and just abandoned it. Now this is serious for me: to abandon a book in the middle of the night with no replacement – never! But, hands up, I did. Sorry Sally Bayley.

I accept that the prose was quite lyrical, but then if you are quoting classic prose, how could it not be? I accept that the language was evocative. I wholeheartedly accept that it is clever. Did I find it illuminating; did I know what was going on? No. True if I had persevered then all might have become clear. Couldn’t do it. Did not have a clue as to what was happening, where it was going, or why.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest review.