Julie Myerson - why am I not surprised that a book has materialised concerning her own son's drug issues?

[glasjam]

Read this is in today's Observer www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/01/julie-myerson-novel-drug-addiction

Does anyone else have the uncomfortable feeling that I have on learning that she is writing about her son's drug problems? I know that writers often mine their own personal experiences for material but I think she's putting her literary endeavours ahead of her son here. From what I can gather, he is still young, his drug issues are ongoing, and although he is out of the family home, surely this is risking any possible future reconcilliation? I also baulk at the way she "weaves historical research about Yelloly with her disturbing account of her son's ejection from the family home" It just smacks of middle-class-writer angst.

My cynicism is further fuelled by my very strong suspicion that Julie Myerson is the author of Living with Teenagers - but that's another story...

I agree with DandyLioness that it's not so much that she wrote about her son or that they are very publicly bickering about what did/didn't happen - this goes on all the time, remember the Constance Briscoe law suit last year? - but that it was published when it was still so raw and the potential to turn the situation around was still there. If she had given it another five years, she could have returned to the material and asked herself whether it was still valid and whether there had been any closure: was Jake now reconciled to the family or had his life been blighted by his silly, adolescent mistakes? It does seem very cruel to brand him so publicly at this stage.

Could she have anticipated the fuss? Maybe not on this scale - certainly not the tabloids picking up on it. I will say that I think her writing is very good and that the extract in the Telegraph was very powerful. I'm really not convinced that a particular type of parenting leads to a particular problem: we have had people on this thread saying based on LWT, she didn't treat them as adults and others saying she gave them too much autonomy. I am sure if she had been an autocrat, then that would have been held against her as well. I have some sympathy with her because I have three small children with very similar age gaps and they are delectable and I don't entirely blame her for being sentimental about the early stuff.

Finally, can we please stop banging on about whether it is down to the sort of school Jake attended which is completely irrelevant. He went to a state school, Debra Bell who wrote a blog about her son's skunk use and throwing him out sent him to Dulwich College which is one of London's top private schools. It really is by the by.

I am curious to know why no-one seems to have questioned whether Jake might in fact, not be a drug addict at all, but suffering from depression. I have read the book (skipped all the dreary Mary Yelloly stuff) and it appears that the Myersons did not seek medical help for Jake, they jumped to their own conclusions and then rushed off to addiction counsellors rather than the local GP. It is also clear that when Jake's problems began, the Myerson's relationship was going through a rocky patch, but Julie, who presents herself as someone who lays bare the truth, was not honest enough to reveal this, except in passing. That in itself is totally hypocritical, as clearly the warring parents were having an effect on their children. This book should never have been allowed to see the light of day. Pity Jake, pity the other two children. They are now all exposed to the full glare of the media - something even an experienced hack like Julie would find hard to manage. Where will this end?

I agree lalalonglegs. I don't think drugs use is necessarily more or less prevalent among state school children. I am in a weird place in that I am struggling to feel any empathy for either of them! I do think he is probably in denial about how hideous he was to live with though. And I think she has created her own monsters through some misguided liberal parenting coupled with her own self-absorbtion. If the LWT columns linked in this thread are typical then all three of her children sound like hideous self-absorbed over-indulged pseudo-intellectual brats. Some of the dialogue from the children in the columns is particularly sneering and arrogant and affected, even by teenaged standards!

lalalonglegs - re. commenting on JM's parenting. Yes, I really did wonder why i posted that. And i think that it was because this has been so "in my face"; I felt sort of "compelled", which is weird. And quite annoying, actually.

Publishing this sort of thing, ongoing, in real time, invites, by necessity, speculation, imo. In a sense the book is a presentation of the "private" into the "public" sphere and is an invitation to judgment. The stakes are high. It's emotive. It's actually a bit distressing, given that it's about children.

Opinion here (mn) seems fairly clear that publishing was a bad idea. That level of bad judgment re publishing, seems to open the terrain on speculation about other lacunae in the writing, or even in life self-awareness/awareness of others. Which can only be speculation, we have no direct experience of this "private" situation, yet the substance/essence of this book seems to draw, even suck that kind of response. Partly because it is so resolutely in the public domain.

When i thought about why I felt "compelled" it was very strange. I think I felt the need to redress some sort of "other side" and power imbalance. Which is strange. I'm surprised by how sorry I feel for JM's son - who i do not know and whose situation I don't know, either! That public/inviting judgement structure of the book seems to amplify the potential of this book to be a putting forward of one side, which only amplifies the "smaller voice" of the less powerful son.

If I'm honest, I am p* off that I am having this response sort of "pulled" out of me. Despite my best efforts at avoidance. (Note to self: turn page.) This is definitely the "dark side" of celebrity culture/"authenticity" porn. I'm officially opting out.

I do think, on the whole, this really, really was a bad idea for a book, for all the reasons listed here. Isn't it amazing that her editor/friends/literary agent/husband didn't suggest, gently, it might be a slightly mad, even destructive, thing to do?

Anyway, I've vented now. Sorry! Felt I just had to get it off my chest. I really am quite weirdly annoyed about this. I'm going to move away from the thread, turn the page and be jolly glad i can.

Apologies twice over - that was really pompus, self-indulgent twaddle!

I'm just sitting here about to go out, so that was a bit introspective. (cringe).

"Publishing this sort of thing, ongoing, in real time, invites, by necessity, speculation, imo."

I've never seen so many perfectly justified commas in such a short sentence, cb

Is anyone going to call into Jeremy Vine? I hope her son does!

Goodness me is there no stopping this woman? I find it despicable how much she is pushing herself forward in the media at the moment

she clearly needs therapy, i feel sorry for her, for him and for the whole family to be honest. very fucked up.
she has no self-awareness at all which is why she is a terrible writer. how can you write about people if you don't understand yourself?

She says it's not about the money, but then if that was true and she just wanted to help, she should give the money to drugs charity

She's a good writer, actually -- have you read Sleepwalking? She writes amazingly well on childbirth and new babies. But is obviously not so good with RL older children.

She is totally deluded.

I agree that she's good.

ok, have only read her novel laura blundy and part of Home - not a fan. i do feel sorry for her, has she realized what a mistake she has made?

cherryblossoms - nothing I wrote was aimed at you particularly. I don't think you sounded at all pompous.

viggoandjavier - her children in LWT were always saying she needed therapy which I took, at the time, to be one of those sophisiticated but cruel things family members can do but, perhaps, they had a point... I really don't think she is a terrible writer at all - my problem is that she is very good and I want to keep reading what is deeply troubling and personal stuff. Many superb writers were complete emotional screw-ups.

If she did write the LWT column, the distinct impression I got from that was that she liked them as (apparently very compliant!) toddlers, but a lot less afterwards - she seemed to have painted herself a perfect image of what parenthood would be like, and is unable to cope with the disappointment that it isn't. If that isn't setting yourself up to fail, I don't know what is.

As for the column dittany linked to - my mother would have torn strips off us, but I can't imagine her ever saying "it's embarrassing" - she has far more confidence than that. That said, if my mother had walked in and we'd been fighting, we'd have stopped Very Quickly - she has a Look that can turn you to stone. I'm attempting to cultivate one for myself.

it's a complete over-reaction, especially all this tough love stuff.

the bit in the paper that did make me laugh, was her son seeing his parents cowering in the corner when he wanted to come in and his little brother laughing and passing a chocolate mousse and spoon through the cat flap .

feel very sorry for her son. She has documented his private life (at an age where maybe many of us did things we aren't proud of) and put it into the public arena. Imagine trying to get a job, make friends, relationships etc and always having to deal with this aspect of your life which you had NO choice in being made public. It is also from his mother's perspective so not even his own take on things. No doubt it will get really tiresome for him in coming years to have to constantly discuss/explain this.

I'm afraid her journalism put me off reading any of her books. The stuff she wrote when they were small was so very 'I am fabulous. And slim. And a wonderful mother. With wonderful children. Who are slim. I have a fabulous husband*. Did I mention how fabulous I am, by the way?'

• or rather not husband but didn't she change her surname to his, weirdly? I mean, it's weird enough if you're marrying someone IMO (see threads passim) but without the excuse of committing matrimony, wtf?

I may be wrong on this, though. I often am.

would like to look at the stuff she wrote about her small children, is is available online? were they written for the guardian?

MI the Daily Mail made a point of mentioning that the Myerson's were not married so I was wondering about the surname. I was sort of hoping they might be brother and sister committing the ultimate in cultural taboo-breaking, but I suppose deedpoll is more likely. Why though?

Libby Purvis voice of sense today in Times
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article5870776.ece

Ah, you see MI I read Sleepwalking first and sort of bypassed her journalism. I think you can legitimately write about babies in a 'me' sort of way, and she did it very well. But clearly if you're still at it when they're bigger kids then there's trouble in the offing.

Have we resolved whether or not she wrote the LWT column? Neither of the posters who made such strong assertions in both directions have been back to explain, have they?

DullWitch, agree re. Libby Purvis. Can't we just abolish the cabinet and put LP in charge of us all instead? I'd have so much more confidence in her than in Jacqui Smith or wossname Miliband.