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...

What I find a bit repulsive is that she's doing this not just once, with her 'emergency' as her dh puts it - the whole cannabis teen, but twice by also publishing the living with teenagers book. The columns have been removed from the website to protect the children, but it's still coming out in a book! She apparently had to 'beg forgiveness' from her children after they found out about the column, so how come she's publishing that one too?

She's a weird woman. I'm sure some novelists are driven to write about themselves, but there have to be limits to protect other people, especially people it's your job to protect, it's all a bit vile really.

The book is published by Headline - not the Guardian - so it's not up to the Guardian what happens to it.

I suspect they have looked at the furore surrounding The Lost Child and have decided they don't want to be accused of the same things, and have sought to protect themselves as much as the children.

Also to be fair, having the columns in an online, searchable format does make them much more accessible (particularly to school kids) than a book you actually have to go out and buy and read. I think there is some logic in withdrawing the columns from the internet.

Yes, definitely logic in withdrawing the columns, and logic in pulling both books too, and encouraging Myerson to concentrate on writing about people who are made up or not alive, or at the very least, not her children.

I've been trying to think of a word like revenge, but which isn't so strong, but I can't think of one. In the LWT columns she was so passive, so much a victim to her children's cruelty, and their jibes and teasing. So appalled and surprised that her babies should have grown-up this way, and she seemed to chose to 'say nothing' a lot of the time. She seemed quite at a loss, and a lot of the time it was clear that they were just provoking her, stepping over non-existent boundaries, pushing for her attention, despising her weakness.

I think the columns were a way of trying to get some ground back, in her head at least, of trying to make sense of it. It lacks lots of insight. It's interesting how exposing it is too, how we can all see what the problems are or were, but she couldn't. But I guess lots of families are this way - it's easy for an outsider to see the strains and the power plays in a family, but quite hard when you are on the inside.

Whole thing rather sobering really. I'm going to go now and make up LOADS of rules for my children.

Lots of us do this by writing about it on mumsnet, or emailing friends, or writing it all down. But it's the needing the big audience of guardian readers and book buyers that does turn it into something that looks a bit vengeful and is quite an aggressive thing to do to your kids I think.

I don't think it was meant to be aggressive though. I think it's just a really sad combination of vain, deluded, a bit damaged, and a bit doing what she does, and has done for years and years. I don't think it's 'right' but I see where it came from, and I see why she might have thought it was okay, or got in the habit of thinking it was acceptable.

It's a dreadful lack of insight really. I do feel sorry for her, just because it's such an epic and dreadful mistake, and so unknowing, I suppose.

The thing is, LWT was compulsive because it was so dreadful. It was arguably good writing, in that sense; but it was car-crash reading for the middle-classes. I'd read it and think 'ffs, that Eddie is a psycho, Becca is being encouraged to become a facilitating doormat and Jake's being urged into being a mini-Eddie'; yes, the addiction element does perhaps explain some of that, but honestly, it was not the sobering searing reality laid bare wossname that Becky Gardiner (usually a woman of considerable sense) alleges in today's Guardian.

Revenge isn't really too strong - when you think that she has taken the worst bits of a time in someone's life when they're at their most difficult and angry and unreasonable, and sensationalised it and put it in a column for two years, and written a book about the oldest being a home smashing drug addict and marketed it all over the place. I was quite put out when I read my mother's account of teenage me - and that was in her diary, if she'd published it for all my friends to see, I'm not sure how you get past that.

No, I think you're right MI.

It reminds me a bit of Rachel Cusk's book. Just because they are both writing about their fairly dreadful experiences, and imagining they are telling a 'truth' and are articulating how it must be for lots of people.

And then people say 'it was nothing like that for me! Are you mad? I think you are a dreadful parent.'

quite, MI.

I used to read it, see the MN posts condemning it, and think presumably it's exaggerated and I don't have a teenager so maybe I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

It's not just Myerson, though, her husband's just as bad. His Guardian piece was self-serving drivel. An emergency called skunk indeed. And in what way was her book helping, exactly?

I have a friend who was plundered and pushed out into the public realm endlessly by her well-known mother. I think it's fair to say it has left her with trust isshoes.

And surely the 'insight' bit comes after you've begged forgiveness from your furious children, and before you publish BOTH the books? Maybe even round about now, there should be some, rather than the dad going on about how it's fine because it's an emergency. In an emergency, you'd get some kind of family therapy, not shovel it onto a page and get a couple of book deals, I'd have thought.

This seems to be more than just bad parenting coupled with egomania, but a social experiment on how to ruin a teenager to get a good book out at the end...

Having read Jacks side, as provided by the link below,
I wonder if any of the dramatic situations in this familys appaling treatment of their son, was ever fuelled by this womans underlying desire to create new material for her column.
It would not surprise me.

Could it be, that she would push her own son to extremes, for column inches?

But I suppose, money will roll in for her, and who cares if there was a moment of disgust thrown her way, all publicity is good publicity, right?

They might have been composites of her children though edam, we don't know. They might not have been exactly truthful all of the time.

That's a horrible thought, Boco, I'd hate to read my mother's account of my teenage years! (Although I could reassure myself that my sister was even worse so I looked quite reasonable in contrast.)

Its a rather banal tale of abuse begetting abuse. Narcissists like Myerson don't respect others, especially their children. they are just extensions of themselves.And when the children don't comply with being an admiring mirror for her to preen in, the poor me narcissist becomes the victim of her children. Very passive aggressive. Its child abuse, pure and simple. But I doubt she would ever see it, being a parent doesn't seem to be a role she has understood.

No! I don't think she pushed him for her column. Not at all. Of course not. I don't think she's a demon, I think she was a weak parent, and probably a selfish one, and I think her thinking is all screwed up.

Oh yes, that's partly what I wrapped up in 'exaggerated'. I'm a journalist and wouldn't touch confessional shite even if someone paid me. ESPECIALLY about someone else.

Thing is, you get paid less for doing proper research and writing about real stuff that's actually going on in the world...

Yes, and she's a novelist, right. Not a journalist, so that's a big difference too. It also means that what she feels becomes the way she measures herself in the world - which is why salome narcissism point is a good one too.

Sad old business I think. Sad because she didn't seem to know or does know any different, and it's like watching someone walk across a frozen lake, laughing prettily in the wind, and hearing the ice crack with every step.

What I don't understand is why she didn't try to disguise it a bit more. Throw in some twins, or change their sexes. Set them in Birmingham. She has amazing imagination - so why not use it to protect her children?

The whole thing is BAFFFFFFLINGGG

Having said that, there is a v. tasty pic of Jake Myerson in one of today's papers. That boy needs to get a single out. Or come and mow my lawn on a very hot day.

Rachel Cusk's breathy account made me want to slap her, I'm afraid. Not least because she was clearly far too floaty and ethereal to engage with any of the services which could possibly have helped her. She wafted around looking for childcare and I read it thinking TRY YOUR LOCAL EARLY YEARS SERVICE FOR A LIST OF AVAILABLE PROVISION YOU WALLY.

hello mummy

Lolol MI. If only she'd asked you.

TRY YOUR LOCAL EARLY YEARS SERVICE FOR A LIST OF AVAILABLE PROVISION

Snooort - harsh but fair.