4 out of 5 stars
I am old enough to have to have grown up in the 1970s and 1980s. I grew up in leafy Surrey and the north then for me was a place that was almost a foreign country. Catherine was growing up in the north, and had all the pressures of life there to contend with and this is her story of her time.
Beginning in 1976, a summer I remember being so very hot and long, it would be the last time she would spend with both her parents at their home in Sheffield. Having parents that had separated and divorced back in those days was really unusual, it would be a while before I would find out that my dad is a divorcee.
I remember the Yorkshire Ripper being a news story at the time. He claimed he was offering a public service by ridding society of certain types of women. He killed at will, with women of any profession, though and was a brutal psychopath. It was horrible but not a threat to a lad growing up in Surrey. For Taylor and her contemporaries, the threat was real, so much so that she wasn’t allowed to walk home alone.
What we did have in common was the spectre of nuclear Armageddon. For me, the fear was real, and as the two super powers jostled for supremacy. I thought I would hear that public announcement, ‘Mine is the last voice you will ever hear’ For Taylor, though, she was seduced by the non-violent protest at Greenham Common by thousands of women. She is an extra in the film Threads, a story about a nuclear strike on Britain, and to be honest, it sounds pretty grim. It horrified the audience that watched it in 1984
This isn’t just a story of the age, though; this is a personal memoir. We read about the relationships that came and went and friendships that deepened. She goes to University and works part-time in a knife factory. She has major health issues that she is convinced she is not going to survive.
Life, thankfully, continued, but she had an unexpected pregnancy. Taylor is going to have to make some difficult decisions. As her degree finishes, she applies for a job in a bookshop. She got the job along with another girl and began work in the travel section, She really wanted to work in fiction where she could put her English degree fully to use. At the end of the trial period, only one of them would be kept on though.
In amongst all of this, there is a tragedy. A friend of hers, Rosa, who she shared a house with, dies, Theo out pouring of grief from friends and family makes for painful reading. Her life is punctuated with the events of the time that I remember, too. Where and when I heard them was a different context to her, but they were equally memorable for me as well.
This is an honest and raw memoir. Taylor had a tough life emotionally, and this is eloquently recounted in this book. It also shows that we all have a story to tell, not just the rich and famous and that these stories need to be heard by everyone. This is well worth reading.
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