'I've never read a book like it. It's as if they tore their own hearts out and asked the other to hold it for them while they wrote.' Phoebe Waller-Bridge
'A terrific read' Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun
'Remarkable...As a stark insight into the disease, In the Blood makes a mark...' The Sunday Times Culture
?'Alcohol flows across families like water over a landscape. Sometimes it moves in torrents, sometimes in floods, sometimes in trickles. It always shapes the ground it covers in unmistakable ways.'
In the Blood is a memoir in two voices, those of a mother and daughter both in the grip of the disease that has ravaged generations of women in their family. Julia, aged sixty-five, and Arabella, thirty-eight, ended up in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous just nine months apart.
In some ways it's a predictable story; two addicts drank and destroyed and ransacked until they could drink no more. In others, it is entirely unlike any account of motherhood or addiction that has ever been told. This is not a recovery memoir, but rather an unflinching family drama spanning generations, whilst looking pain and shame directly in the eye.
Confronting the difficulty of writing faithfully about those we love and the ways in which memory blurs the boundaries of fact, this is the story of women who grew up in shadows, and have navigated their way out of darkness.
Brutally honest, darkly funny and bursting with hope, In The Blood is the sound of the howling cry of illness and betrayal across generations, and what you do with that sound when you hear it.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
'This phenomenal book blows the doors off the reality of a savage illness that is still, somehow, not taken seriously enough. Two extraordinary writers; mother and daughter, have faced each other with the most frightening thing of all - the truth. The result is a roar of a book, bursting with vivid stories, incredible insights, hard truths and fierce, fierce love. Whether you have the disease yourself or not, this book will change the way you see the world, your mother and yourself.' Phoebe Waller-Bridge
'A terrific read ... Arabella and Julia are taking ownership of their pasts in a way that will provide healing - for themselves, future generations and for readers.' Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun and The Instant
'Eloquent, starkly self-scrutinising, and at times even funny [...] It has stayed in my mind since the moment I put it down.' The Telegraph
'Remarkable...As a stark insight into the disease, In the Blood makes a mark...'The Sunday Times
'A memoir of devastating clarity.' The Spectator
'This mesmerising do-si-do between mother and daughter will resonate with so many women, drinkers or no. Anyone who has ever fancied a drink will find startlingly apt descriptions, and cause to reflect on their own impulses and dissimulations. This double memoir is a cut above.' Zoe Strimpel
'In The Blood is an essential contribution to our understanding of addiction in all its forms. Unique in its dual perspective, it takes the reader into the heart of experience of how alcoholism and the code of silence has wreaked havoc throughout a family. An extraordinary memoir that is bold and searingly honest.' Lily Dunn, author of Sins of My Father
'Beautifully written and fiercely moving ... Equal parts wise, heartbreaking and captivating, this is a remarkable and rare book.' Alex Larman
'Bold and honest, this book puts children of alcoholics on the map.' Calum Best, Patron of the charity NACOA
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Maße
Höhe: 238 mm
Breite: 156 mm
Dicke: 32 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-00-864843-5 (9780008648435)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Julia Hamilton is a novelist. She has published six novels and has written for Harpers & Queen, Vogue, the Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times, and the Times Literary Supplement. In the Blood is her first work of non-fiction.
Arabella Byrne is a journalist. She has written widely for the Spectator, the Critic, Tatler, and the Daily Mail amongst others. She is an ambassador for NACOA, the National Association for Children of Alcoholics. In the Blood will be her first book.
