Bad Blood

This is one of those memoirs of a difficult, sometimes violent girlhood, that makes riveting reading--not as harrowing as Andrea Ashworth's brilliant Once in a House on Fire, but every bit as good. Whether this is voyeuristic is debatable, but clearly the author, Lorna Sage, felt she had something to tell, and she tells it vividly. She grew up with an absent father, a quiet and docile mother, and--the two most powerful figures of her formative years--a pair of ferocious, tyrannical, impossible grandparents. Her grandfather is the most striking of all, not least because he was a Church of England clergyman. Sage offers an unforgettable evocation of this bitter, hard-drinking, womanising cleric, as he strides through the desolate churchyard with his little granddaughter clinging onto his black skirts in the wind. "He was good at funerals, being gaunt and lined, marked with mortality. He had a scar down his hollow cheek, too, which grandma had done with the carving knife one of the many times when he came home pissed and incapable." The place, too, is strongly evoked: a small, isolated, squalid village on the English-Welsh border in darkest Shropshire, the very landscape of that haunting writer of the 1920s, Mary Webb. Sometimes, though, Sage's girlhood--we're only talking 1940s and 1950s here--feels more like it is something out of the pages of the Brontës, and indeed she acknowledges this freely. "Perhaps I really did grow up, as I sometimes suspect, in a time warp, an enclave of the 19th century?" That weird sense of anachronism makes this a riveting if sometimes uncomfortable read.--Christopher Hart

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Too long and drawn out for me. - Rated
This book leaves nothing to the imagination as too-detailed-descriptions drag on. It`s good to know what places look like - but come on don`t kill it..
I was sooooo depressed with the constant harping on about the overgrown garden - reminded me of my childhhood in our overgrown garden - and i don`t need any reminders of that thank you very much..
While reading this i found my mind wandering to other things - and that`s not a good sign is it ? I didn`t enjoy this at all, but 3 for trying.

Wonderful - Rated
I can almost understand why some reviewers thought this memoir boring but I have to say I enjoyed it from start to finish, but especially the opening chapters about the grandfather and grandmother - the descriptions of the grandmother's childhood home were marvellous. The writing is immediate and compelling, very good indeed, in fact.

'Bad Blood' By Lorna Sage - Rated
This true story by Lorna Sage grips your heart but also lifts your spirits as she describes her life throughout the war as a young child. Her childhood through post war Britain is described brilliantly, and memories of her family almost bring tears to your eyes. It is unexpected in some areas with some mad situations she finds herself in. it is definitely a memorable book and is also an insight into life in wartimes. She describes her feelings in great detail and you actually feel that you are there in the war with her, experiencing exactly what she is going through and what she has suffered. But at the same time you wish you weren't there and feel lucky to live in the generation we do. You feel sorry for her and her family for what they had to live in and live through. Finally this is an excellent book, a masterpiece, recommended to anyone. It captures your heart and in my view there won't be a better memoir published.

Sensitive and memorable - Rated
Sensitive and memorable

I am female and only two years younger than Lorna so I empathised readily with her childhood and teen-age years. It brought back so many identical memories it could have been me instead of her. It was a lovely read of memorabilia, and for anyone to say that memoir is an easy option to write, compared with the novel, I beg to differ. We can all write down anecdotal bits and pieces, but the skill is in turning it into a readable biography. That both Lorna and Vic, against all odds, gained further education, and illustrious careers, was truly admirable. The ending was tender and sweet, and very emotional. My only bewilderment was that the prose and punctuation was sometimes a bit lacking. Nevertheless, recommended as a very worthwhile read.

Absorbing - Rated
This book so absorbed my attention that I felt as though I was there, intimately and exclusively, spying on Lorna's Sage's formative years. She writes in a way that feels unusually personal; I was drawn in from the first page.

The book is sad and touching, but not only that; Sage sensitively captures many elements of her childhood - some parts of which made me laugh, some of which I even recognised from my own (much more modern) early years. "Bad Blood" is timeless in that sense.