Coming Clean by Liz Fraser

[RhinoRhino]

A couple of threads that I had posted on relating to the Memoir ‘Coming Clean’ by Liz Fraser have been deleted from the MN site, apparently due to non-compliance of the MN guidelines from the posters. MN are obviously well within their rights to delete threads if they demonstrably fail to comply with their guidelines, nevertheless I feel strongly that MN posters are given a platform to critique this book, and also any other public ventures by this author. It would be neither fair nor right that posters are completely silenced in this particular matter.

As such, and in line with Mumsnet not seeing “anything wrong with honest feedback” I would like to make the comment that Coming Clean as a Memoir falls short due to the shaky and not entirely truthful narrative. There are certain facts contained within this memoir that are easily disprovable (for example, relating to the marital status of both author and her partner when they started their ill-fated affair), which leaves a massive question mark over the rest of the book. Is it entirely reasonable to make money from something that is promoted as truthful when it is, in fact, not entirely true?

I think there are people whose lives have been negatively impacted by the book and its subject matter, and I hope that MN will agree that these people should have a voice, as should anybody who wants to comment on a published piece of work.

As long as posters align their comments with the MN guidelines, this is a topic that people may wish to keep discussing, and also keep in the public domain. And if MN wants to provide a set of rules particular to this thread – certainly if they are arbitrary and differ from the general guidelines - I am sure it would be very helpful.

Mumsnet, please help us to help each other by keeping in the public domain something that us silenced mums feel should be out there.

I remember a while ago she shared a rare pic of the ‘other kids’ on hols when they were younger and she gushed about how they could only afford one slice of 7euro cake so all the kids shared one slice as a treat …
err, pull the other one control freak 😂

hope it’s less severe now at Casa Liz
but those leftover cheap ham sandwiches with tiny amount of cherry tomatoes that she often posts as the child’s ‘picnic’ while she has being cycled around foreign countries for hours don’t inspire much

(not the usual fresh delicious baguette you can get in those countries anyway or heaven forbid a fresh pastry or crisps or a tasty lemonade)

But she does like to take bags of kettle chips over to peoples homes with wine though 🤔 🤔 🤔

And those pasties she posts at breakfast when she's abroad. Does she really think we believe she eats them? One of those would require another 6,000 km on the bike, surely? 🥐 it's all a load of bollocks.

Pastries rather

Lol.
but if I do find photos proving I’d loads of friends, there would be any.

Not saying that Liz Fraser is weird, paucity of friends and family isn’t unusual

The writing retreat - I think she stayed one night at an airbnb for some mundane reason and reinvented it as something exotic. Why were there no photos of the other writers, the amazing desk, the floorboards...

And also, while I'm here, the totally unaware and yet obviously posed photos of her searching her handily placed bookshelves? She's just teasing us! That 'focused on my books' expression is so funny.

And why would you have a sofa right under a window that opened inwards? Obviously she has no friends, or they'd be concussed whenever they sat there. I bet every house guest moves that sofa as soon as they're through the doors.

AHAHAHAHAHA. That 'omg didn't know I was being filmed' video. if that was meant to be her daughter, well, when my 5 year old granddaughter grabs my phone, we get the floor, half a cat's ear and possibly one of her sister's eyes...

She's so transparent.

I expect the writing retreat was made up. Sometimes we forget that she constantly stretches the truth (stretches being an understatement). A load of rubbish basically.

And the accidentally being filmed post! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Her expression! Poor Scout has her uses doesn't she?

✅ poverty porn

Just this morning I too found myself aloft high furniture (I’ve worked long and hard for 😅) to flick through my own carefully selected turn of the century feminist anthologies. Rather than teeny tiny shorts however, I was wearing teeny tiny jodhpurs while my husband, would you believe it, filmed me while dressed in his stallion onesie. Have I not told you? On Saturdays I’m no longer a lowly postal worker but I live my life as if a stable wench in one of my beloved Jillly Cooper bonk busters. I know 🤷‍♀️

I knew it haha 🤣 she’s now posted fresh food from the market. The proprietor o’Casa Liz is obviously an avid reader here 👋

As pointed out in Tattle, she’s invented afternoon tea 🙊

After last night's fresh and hearty dinner

You know, she must have a really lonely life. Apart from the 'muscling in' pjot opportunity evenings where everyone else just looks scared or fed up with her; she seems to be totally on her own.
Wouldn't normal people be keen to take a close friend or relative to such a lovely place they own, to share it and enjoy it. I mean, 5 year olds are lovely but every holiday?

It's a clear 'the lady doth protest too much' with all these screeching 'I'M SO SO HAPPY LOOK AT MEEEEEEE' shots every five minutes

If she wasn't so self-centred and unpleasant, I might even feel sorry for her.

She writes like a woman who has never opened her eyes/bothered to travel in the country she lives. Oxfordshire is stunning. A wealth of rolling hills and history. The vale of the white horse, Blenheim Palace, Henley on Thames, the Cotswolds. Further afield, Cornwall and Yorkshire with tiny streets snd wild coastlines. Wales within easy reach. Yet she prefers polluting air miles and distance from anyone her daughter knows. Surely with her son staying with her…. If he is, she would take advantage and explore her own country with him and her daughter. As someone else said, why with no friends? Why not with her single parent “lawyer of the year” university friend who KNOWS!? Why isolate her daughter to a very small part of a very small city when she could enjoy the most varied and beautiful country many days there is, the one where she lives. Plenty of poor people to patronise here. She can come knocking in my door. Photograph me taking the bus with my shopping!

She obsessed with being part this, part that, but none of her “friends” are anything but white middle class. Why buy in Italy when she claims her roots are in Czech Republic? I love her suggestion that her grandparents were these simple folk. He mum met her dad at uni in Edinburgh. Czechoslovakian peasants girls didn’t go to uni. I think you had to be the right sort of Czech, innit 😉

Don't be silly - she doesn't take pics of other people - only herself, preferably with as few clothes on as possible. Even then it's poor little Scout that gets roped in to be photographer. I think it's creepy and abusive to make your five year old follow you around taking photos of you for social media 24/7. I wonder how Scout will look back on this when she is older. With a good deal of anger I would imagine.

I’ve never met anyone with so much incoming work when they deliver so few finished results. Right now it’s hard for people with solid work track records to secure work yet L seemingly clinks a glass or drops her draws and the next project drops in her lap. Anyway, we must be due the two promise project press releases soon. It’s august on Tuesday. More life changing works in progress for us silenced women. Remember the one which reduced her parents to tears, poolside, back in the lounging, rose petal eating days of summer? Don’t hold your breaths Cleaners!

P.s. if it’s work to do with that website, fingers crossed it’s to rewrite it and she’s not already written it. Wfh does the opening paragraph mean? What about it will make me book a room?!!!

Oh dear, the sitting-on-the-ground-by -the-wall-gurning-with-bliss pic is just frightful. And poor Scout having to capture that. Wonder how many takes were required to get it just right for Liz's target audience: Mike, who is neither looking at her Insta/Twitter nor remotely interested.

Daughter will grow up and read her mothers time about her father and by then will have the measure of it all

It's really quite bizarre isn't it? And the constant I LOVE IT HERE' s in the lovely weather and her OWN HOME WORKED AND STRIVED FOR, are no doubt really reassuring for all the abused and silenced women she strives so hard to help.🤮🤮🙄

I don’t get how the scene of the abuse can be in anyway comforting and comfortable for her. It goes against anything I’ve heard from victims of abuse and sadly I know lots. My kids snd I can’t even face going to the town where it all happened. Mind you how she lives her life entir is completely different to me. I quite literally nearly died for my kids getting them out of a burning house while she abandoned hers and claims she’s a great mum. Very few people know what actually happened to me and my kids. I think this is best for them. I don’t want people pitying them or worse judging them and me which is what happens when you air your dirty laundry or in her case in that gurning pic almost air the blinking knickers you’re wearing.

I hope she remembers I own a tiny bit of that house! Shout out to all your contributors would be nice every so often.

Yes given that her relationship with an alcoholic was so abusive she developed cptsd, can’t work and has a domestic abuse support worker I am surprised she regularly goes back to scene and pets pictures of herself enjoying an alcoholic drink sounds like it has been exaggerated for attention