Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Jonathan Cape (2012), Hardcover, 368 pages
Description
Struggling through dead-end jobs after a ten-year stint in prison, Londoner Lulu Adler recalls her violent childhood, battles with mental illness, and entry into the criminal world before receiving an unexpected settlement that enables her healing relocation to central Africa.
User reviews
LibraryThing member mojomomma
I'd write a review if I had a clue what this book was about. it is beautifully written, but so British it is almost like reading another language. the narrator, known as Lulu, Kim, Catherine, Mitten, etc. Tells the disjointed story of her dysfunctional family from her point of view as she grows.
LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri
Having just finished this book it is going to get 5 stars before the feeling begins to fade. Touched some deep places in the soul and was a real adventure building the story from the fragments presented from different times and places. Not poetry but with an almost-poetry feel. Somehow the
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Wasteland came to mind - "These fragments I have shored against my ruin" - and when I read it again I might try reading it out loud. Show Less
LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri
Having just finished this book it is going to get 5 stars before the feeling begins to fade. Touched some deep places in the soul and was a real adventure building the story from the fragments presented from different times and places. Not poetry but with an almost-poetry feel. Somehow the
Show More
Wasteland came to mind - "These fragments I have shored against my ruin" - and when I read it again I might try reading it out loud. Show Less
Awards
Authors' Club First Novel Award (Winner — 2013)
Language
Physical description
368 p.
ISBN
0224093762 / 9780224093767
Local notes
After ten years in a London prison, Louise Adler (Lulu) is released with only a new alias to rebuild her life. Working a series of dead-end jobs, she carries a past full of secrets: a childhood marked by the violence and madness of her parents, followed by a reckless adolescence. From abandoned psychiatric hospitals to Edwardian-themed casinos, from a brief first love to the company of criminals, Lulu has spent her youth in an ever-shifting landscape of deceit and survival. But when she’s awarded an unexpected settlement claim after prison, she travels to the landscape of her childhood imagination, the central African range known as the Mountains of the Moon. There, in the region’s stark beauty, she attempts to piece together the fragments of her battered psyche.
I really liked the cover but the story was a bit depressing.
I really liked the cover but the story was a bit depressing.