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Anyone reading UGLY at the moment?

15 replies

ChampsTheFloozie · 19/05/2006 21:14

???

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ChampsTheFloozie · 20/05/2006 15:18

Bump!!

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nannyme · 20/05/2006 15:25

I read it a while ago.

Very upsetting but a marvellous read. That girl had courage, determination, strength...and a wicked, wicked mother.

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ChampsTheFloozie · 22/05/2006 12:01

hiya!!

very upsetting, i'm on the 5th chapter now. what a horrid childhood. mother is calculating ang spiteful aswell as terribly violent

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Cakehead · 22/05/2006 20:45

Actually there was an article in one of the papers recently by her brothers/sisters (sorry can't remember which) saying that the mother was going to take action through the courts. The whole family seemed to be united in saying that the author had actually very much exaggerated her experiences. Apparently the sisters (I think) was saying that yes, their mother had been strict, but no, it wasn't on the level described in the book. Interesting, though.

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nannyme · 22/05/2006 21:01

From reading the book that doesn't surprise me. Neither does it from the perspective of what I understand about familial abuse.

The need for a shroud of secrecy is great, whether perpetrator or innocent family member. To be part of a happy, normal family is a strong desire to the extent that any threat to that may be covered up, smothered and denied: However true.

I cannot see any particular reason for her making it all up. Indeed the story is not of the cruellest abuse imagineable which in itself lends the book an element of believeability.

The narrator was strong and brave throughout and remains so for telling her story as part of her healing process. If the story is true then the denial is typical cowardice on her mother's part.

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yoyo · 22/05/2006 21:22

I did think the book was very upsetting but it received so much coverage in the press and on radio that it wasn't as shocking as I'd expected. I did find myself losing interest towards the end, not in her and her story but in the way the book was written. I find it hard to believe that anyone could remember conversations and events so clearly (didn't her mother take her journals off her?). That is not to suggest that I didn't believe her account though.

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Adorabelle · 22/05/2006 21:37

Haven't read Ugly yet but have read "I Choose to Live" by Sabine Dardenne.
A more harrowing book of child abuse I doubt you could find. Sobbed all the way through at the sheer awfulness of it, then sobbed at the courage that Sabine had/has. Makes you count your blessings.

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yoyo · 22/05/2006 22:23

Have you read Andrea Ashworth's "Once in a House on Fire"? Absolutely brilliant.

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SparklyGothKat · 22/05/2006 22:32

Have read Ugly, I was shocked by the violent she recieved from her mother. Have also read 'i chose to live' very harrowing. Am reading 'don't ever tell' atm

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Champs · 22/05/2006 23:11

yes, i heard the fam were saying it wasn't true. but i'm thinking the lady who wrote it is a judge/lawyer so will be very aware of the consequencies of writting something untrue as that.

not read any of the other books mentioned but have read "push" really touching and hard to read.