My Life in Orange

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An opportunity missed - Rated
I grabbed this book with both hands and rushed to the till - couldnt get the money out of my hands fast enough. Couldnt wait to read what I thought would be a hilarious and touching account of life as a child of Osho. What a disappointment! First off, the book's editor deserves to be shot - there was so much repetition - sometimes within a page or two - that I wondered if the book had actually been read by the editor at all. Secondly, although occasionally offering up a few genuine nuggets of information about ashram life, the book was mostly a 'misery memoir' - a child enduring much separation from a longed for mother. My sympathy for the author was unfortunately much reduced by the moaning, self indulgent tone of voice. What an opportunity missed.
If you want to hear about life as a so called Osho Beloved read Lucy Edge's Yoga School Dropout - she is hilarious on the subject of life in his five star spiritual spa in Pune - the Kylie Minogue discos, the sharing of the maroon energy field, the south american ashram babes, etc. You will howl with laughter - I promise!

Heartbreaking evocation of loneliness - Rated
A friend asked me to read this book to understand something of what it can be like to be raised by idealists. It broke my heart. I am not an emotional person, but the evocation of feeling absolutely lonely and lost in the midst of a crowd in early childhood, and struggling to adulthood as best the author could, really got to me. But if that was all the book was, it would not be all that remarkable - there are plenty of very deliberately heartrending books out there for emotional tourists to read. What makes this book special is that the author is not writing solely for his own benefit, but also to explain something about utopias and the attempt to be more fully human in our unpromising late capitalist world - the tragedy is that the intention is honourable and the realisation so full of disasters. Thus the author is clearly angry and damaged - who isn't? - but he has achieved some kind of intellectual appreciation of what lay behind his experience and how it was more than simple selfishness.

A disappointment - Rated
I feel rather mean writing a critical review - the author obviously had a difficult childhood - but my genuine reaction to this book is one of disappointment. If it was restricted only to Tim Guest's personal memories, it would be a very short work: I can imagine it making a worthwhile longish article in a Sunday supplement for one of the broadsheets. He has therefore padded it out with a narrative of the rise and fall of the Bhagwan Rajneesh movement derived from other people's books, and perhaps most crucially of all from his mother's recollections.

I understand that it was miserable for him being deprived of her company for long stretches of time, and that he was lonely and wretched for years on end, but this information, endlessly recycled over 320 pages, is insufficiently gripping. Some of the detail is illuminating - the sexual play of the children, for example; some of it is funny - the creche run by the Men Against Sexism Group; and some of it is poignant - his belief that he overhears his mother laughing at him when he tries repeatedly to gain her attention. However, stories about a child sliding on a polished floor, sneaking into the kitchen for a Marmite sandwich or watching cartoons on American television are just not very interesting, regardless of whether that child is a member of a bizarre commune or somebody from down our own street.

The book does not seem particularly well edited either: I counted at least three occasions on which the same piece of information is repeated in almost the same words within a few pages of its first appearance. Nor, despite the praise of the professional critics, does the author's prose seem any great shakes. It works best when he goes for simplicity: there is a section when he marshalls his metaphors in an attempt to convey the loneliness he felt in Germany, and it just absolutely dies on the page.

A nice study of a weird childhood - Rated
One of the defining elements of this book is the neutral tone in which it is written. Judgements are left to the reader. The story is just told as it was, describing very well how it felt to live that strange life, effectively taking second place in his mothers life to a 'guru' who, in the end, brought no enlightenement. The loneliness pierces through this book. Read it for a hint of how a child sees life.

it's as orange as you like! - Rated
Loved it. Read this one through from cover to cover in two days! Tim's story of growing up in a commune though somehow still growing up in isolation is very moving - there were points when I laughed, became very angry and felt desparately sad. that said, I was always impressed by the way the authour avoided self pity, and delivered a witty narrative that kept me involved until the last page.

go buy it - it's very good